June 27, 2024
borkena
Toronto – Seen from the situation about three and half years ago that took the ruling Prosperity Party and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) to war that turned out to be one of the worst in the history of Ethiopia with more than one million loss of lives, what happened this week sound unreal.
Yesterday, Ethiopia’s Ministry of Justice asked the National Electoral Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) to re-accept the TPLF as a legal party “under special consideration.” The government’s political move came a week or so after the Ethiopian parliament approved the proposed bill from the Abiy Ahmed-led council of ministers to allow outlawed political parties for reasons of illegal activity to be accepted as legal entities when they “demonstrate an interest in peaceful and legal” political struggle.
TPLF’s status as a legally registered party with the NEBE was revoked in 2021 after the Ethiopian Parliament designated the TPLF as a terrorist organization because it attacked the Northern Command of the Ethiopian Defense Force ( in November 2020) and committed a massacre in the neighboring Afar and Amhara regions of Ethiopia.
When the Pretoria Agreement – with relentless and invisible diplomatic and political works of the United States and some of its European allies but under a formal brokerage of the African Union- brought the war to an end, Abiy Ahmed’s party and TPLF forged what appeared to move in the direction of political alliance. Political observers and analysts say the Pretoria Agreement saved the TPLF from military demise which would have pronounced its political death too.
Currently, the TPLF is said to have, and this is from official Tigray regional government sources, 270,000 armed combatants and they have not disarmed yet. Also, TPLF has demonstrated behaviors of aggression after the Pretoria Agreement when it invaded the Raya areas militarily and displaced more than 50,000 residents. In Wolkait, the TPLF forces have reportedly killed at least 15 civilians and wounded several others. What analysts are questioning is how the TPLF could be accepted as a political party when it has over 270,000 armed forces.
The NEBE has not yet responded to the request from the Ministry of Justice.
The Defense Force is said to have lost at least 3000 troops when the TPLF attacked the Northern Command of the Defense Force. So far, the Defense Force seems to have nodded to the ruling party’s campaign to make TPLF a legal political entity.
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