Ethiopia: Can Ethiopia Overcome Its Crisis and Be a Normal Country?

opinion

A week has gone by since Prime Minister Hailemriam Desalegn unexpectedly resigned from his postion as party chairman and prime minister of the country. No question that the Prime Minister's resignation was a cumulative result of persistent ant-government protests by Ethiopians over the last three years. Ethiopia's grassroots uprising has transformed into a broad and deep popular resistance that cannot be reversed by empty gestures or repressive means. As much as the resistance seemed fractured and without a common national theme, it is rooted in EPRDF's suppression of basic rights and economic exclusion and exploitation. The humiliation of living as a second-class citizen in one's own country under a repressive system and the collective anguish it inflicts on all is feeding the resistance and driving the desire for change. The ethnic divide foisted and exploited by the ruling party for so long has been bridged by this shared anguish and the realization that standing together benefits all. Make no mistake that the young people of Ethiopia have internalized their resistance against the regime the same way their ancestors did against the Italian occupation of the 1930s. Nothing short of a genuine and fundamental change that addresses their yearning for freedom, justice, opportunity and equality will extinguish this internalized fervor for freedom.

The opposition bloc has a historic duty to usher in this change by building broad consensus on the modalities and mechanisms of a transition to a democratic future. The TPLF/EPRDF must realize that its divide-and-concur policy has largely been defeated, the people of Ethiopia have internalized their resistance against its divisive rule, global and internal politics are not on its side, and the economy is too sick to continue business as usual. It should negotiate in good faith and quickly.

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