June 24, 2026
Aklog Birara (Dr)
Executive summary
Who is Abiy Ahmed?
It is impossible to understand and unpack the intricacies of Ethiopia’s ethnic politics and the existential threat this poses for Ethiopia’s future without examining the ideology that underpins Abiy Ahmed Ali ‘s Oromo elite led Prosperity Party. Nomenclature and the philosophical argument of Medemer (መደመር) aside, Abiy Ahmed Ali has succeeded in creating a dominant party led by his ethnic allies. He has succeeded in populating all critical national and regional institutions with a cadre of beneficiaries and loyalists who belong to one ethnic group. He changes untrusted leaders at any level in the same manner one changes clothing.
Abiy Ahmed is Ethiopia’s prime minister and leader of the Prosperity Party, in power since 2018; he first gained global acclaim as a reformer who released political prisoners, opened political space, and moved to end Ethiopia’s long border conflict with Eritrea, for which he received the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize. His premiership has since become deeply controversial: Ethiopia experienced the devastating Tigray war, continuing domestic conflicts and insecurity in regions including Amhara and Oromia, allegations of repression and human-rights abuses, and contested elections.
Abiy and his supporters emphasize national unity, infrastructure projects, economic growth, and state-building reforms. In June 2026, his party retained a dominant parliamentary majority, reinforcing his political control while critics argued that insecurity and limits on opposition parties undermined the vote. Sources: The Nobel Prize; Reuters, June 21, 2026
Ethiopia’s single party state
The Prosperity Party is the ruling party of Ethiopia and the formal successor to the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front. It was created on 1 December 2019 under Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed after the EPRDF’s constituent parties, together with several long-subordinate regional affiliate parties, agreed to merge into a single national party.
The Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) did not join, which made the party’s birth both a consolidation project and an immediate fault line in Ethiopia’s federal order. The merger was legally enabled by Ethiopia’s 2019 electoral and political-parties proclamation, which explicitly allows party mergers, transfers assets and liabilities to the successor party, and provides a framework for party registration and public funding. It unfolded inside a constitutional system that defines Ethiopia as a federal state, delimits states around identity and consent, and gives political competition a strongly federal-regional character. [1]
This merge masks the fact on the ground that Abiy Ahmed intended the new party to serve as a vehicle and custodian for the ascendancy of Oromo elites over the rest of multiethnic Ethiopia. A powerful central or federal government provides those in power to influence public policy under the pretext of national unity and “comprehensive prosperity.”
In its own rhetoric and founding texts, the Prosperity Party presents itself as a post-EPRDF “national” party built around medemer and around themes of national unity, rule of law, democratic elections, sovereignty, peace, development, and “comprehensive prosperity.” Its official website in 2026 emphasizes peaceful elections, sustainable peace, national unity, diplomacy centered on national interest, digital modernization, and maritime access as a national question. Yet academics and think tanks have consistently argued that the party also represents a major ideological shift away from the EPRDF’s coalition-based multinational federalism toward a more center-oriented, pan-Ethiopian project, with critics warning that this can slide into recentralization. [2]
On the surface this may sound good. Most Ethiopians support national unity, respect for the rule of law, religious freedom. human security, inclusion, peace, stability, political pluralism. democratic elections and prosperity for all.
I ask myself “What is left of medemer (መደመር) when the state leverages its enormous budgetary, coercive, killing, and other forms of punishing power to slaughter innocent civilians using drones, military aircraft, tanks, and the rest? Does this not reduce the population size of those the ruling party targets as mortal enemies?
I recall a statement by Abiy Ahmed’s Chief of Staff of the armed forces Field Marshall Berhanu Jula who said, “We own drones for a reason, to attack our enemies.” The enemies in mind are innocent civilians who happen to be Ethiopians—notably Amara, Tigrean and Oromo. https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTB3JWPwT/
Abiy Ahmed and team undermine Ethiopian national unity with diversity by categorizing the population based on ethnicity and faith. The above TikTok declaration confirms my assessment. When a prime minister identifies himself as a champion of one tribe over the rest; he undermines his own medemer ideology. He makes it a ploy.
If you look at what they say and do not consider what they do; the party’s strengths appear substantial. A copycat, Abiy Ahmed inherited nationwide structures and resources from merged ruling parties that remained electorally dominant. He benefitted from party-state incumbency. This way he can point to real governance achievements in macroeconomic reform, partial postwar stabilization after the Pretoria agreement, and a façade of still-strong headline growth picture.
The donor community contributes to the bizarre nature of growth and development in Ethiopia. Multilateral donors like the IMF and the World Bank tout the façade because they are vested stakeholders. They set aside the fact that abject poverty at 43 percent, multidimensional poverty at more than 70 percent and hyperinflation at more than 40 percent per annum are not achievements to brag about but failures in development policy.
The party’s weaknesses donors ignore are substantial: the conflict-ridden context of its formation, unresolved tensions between national integration and federal self-rule, serious insurgencies in Oromia and Amhara, recurrent allegations of repression and shrinking civic space, public dissatisfaction with economic management, and persistent corruption concerns. [3]
I suggest that Ethiopians and the international community assess Abiy Ahmed’s electoral victory against insurgencies in the Amhara and Oromia regions as well as the non-participation of the TPLF, an ethno-nationalist movement that spearheaded the post-1991 ethnicity and language-based federal state and government. The election is neither free nor fair. It excluded most citizens. It lacks legitimacy.
Public perception matters.
On public perceptions, there is a notable evidence gap: I did not find a recent, transparent public-opinion series measuring support for the Prosperity Party itself after its formation. The best available evidence is indirect.
Gallup found high approval for Abiy in 2020 and confidence in elections before the 2021 vote; Afrobarometer’s 2020 survey found more trust in the ruling party than in opposition parties, but the 2023 Afrobarometer wave also found dedicated support for democracy, accountability, and federalism, alongside widespread dissatisfaction with economic management. Media narratives are sharply polarized: official and party channels portray the PP as reformist, developmental, and nationally integrative, while many international outlets, rights groups, and opposition voices emphasize repression, uneven elections, and the party’s role in Ethiopia’s worsening conflicts. The diaspora and social-media spheres appear highly polarized, but robust PP-specific sentiment data are not publicly available. [4]
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed takes lead responsibility for the high polarization of Ethiopian society including those in the Diaspora. His capture of party, state and government worsens the situation.
Ethiopia finds itself in deeper trouble today than ever before. Its foreign adversaries are more emboldened to fragment it. Its domestic insurgencies are armed to the teeth and are in the process of defining the broad parameters for unified national resistance against the Prosperity Party.
While the societal factors that compel fundamental change exist; it is not clear to me what common denominators opponents plan to use to save Ethiopia from total disintegration.
Navigating Ethiopia’s ethnic polarization is not that easy. However, those opposed to the one-party PP state may wish to consider the following themes:
1/ Prioritize shared citizenship over ethnic and religious polarization (these contrasts opposition groups from the Oromo-elite denominated PP.
2/ Commit to economic resilience through structural and policy reforms to curb spiraling inflation, stimulate growth and youth employment and modernize the rural economy that is in tatters.
3/ Strengthen public trust in national institutions like Ethiopia’s defense forces, national security, federal police, customs, banking system, and the like. These institutions must be overhauled (de-ethnicized) and led by competent people.
4/ Ethiopia must address the root causes of recurrent ethnic and religious conflict; it must embark on a sustained national program of restorative justice. Ethiopia must educate its citizens in peace building, justice, the rule of law and common citizenship.
5/ Ethiopian political, social, and spiritual leaders as well as civil society must inject a new spirit of grassroots level popular engagement and strengthen mutual trust and cooperation among citizens. The top-down approach of the PP has failed to democratize Ethiopian society.
The Genesis of the PP: Formation and legal context
The Prosperity Party emerged from Ethiopia’s post-2018 reform crisis. Abiy Ahmed became prime minister in April 2018 after sustained anti-government protests helped force Hailemariam Desalegn’s resignation. By late 2019, Abiy and allied reformists had moved to dissolve the EPRDF coalition and replace it with a single nationwide party. The Inter-Parliamentary Union’s Ethiopia election profile records that Abiy dissolved the EPRDF in November 2019 and formed the Prosperity Party in December 2019. Reuters’ 2026 election coverage likewise treats the PP as the party Abiy created in 2019 after the mass-protest transition. [5]
The merger’s own founding by-laws, available in an unofficial English translation that mirrors the party’s early governing document, are revealing. The introduction says the party was meant to widen reforms, correct mistakes, and “blend” the EPRDF and affiliate parties into a single organization. It explicitly says the move followed the “11th session of the party’s conference,” was approved by the council of the EPRDF and affiliate parties and was done under Ethiopia’s electoral proclamation. It also describes Ethiopia as needing “a single socio-economic society,” inclusive development, sustainable prosperity, rule of law, respect for both individual and group rights, strong national unity, and struggle “in unison with the idea of medemer.” [6]
The legal basis for the merger was Ethiopia’s Electoral, Political Parties Registration and Election Code of Conduct Proclamation No. 1162/2019. That law expressly allows two or more registered political parties to merge, requires assembly approval and a written merger agreement, and instructs the National Election Board of Ethiopia to cancel the predecessor parties’ certificates and register the new party within one month if the application is compliant. It also states that the new merged party becomes the successor to the merged parties and receives their rights and duties, while party property, funds, and necessary documents are to be transferred to the successor party. The same proclamation also provides government support to political parties that meet vote thresholds, which matters for understanding the structural advantages of any successful successor party. [7]
Constitutional context is equally important. Ethiopia’s 1995 Constitution establishes a “Federal and Democratic State,” vests sovereignty in the “Nations, Nationalities and Peoples of Ethiopia,” and structures the federation around states delimited by settlement patterns, language, identity, and consent. It gives states legislative, executive, and judicial powers, while also creating a federal parliament and an independent National Election Board. In practice, this means that a merger of regionally rooted ruling parties into a single central party was never just an administrative change; it directly touched the underlying logic of Ethiopia’s multinational federation. [8]
That is why the merger was constitutionally legal but politically controversial. Scholars such as Lovise Aalen and Milkessa Gemechu argue that the PP’s emergence risked recentralization by altering the prior state-party-federal arrangement in which each region had its own ruling party inside a coalition. Crisis Group noted in 2020 that the new party was formed by all regional ruling parties except Tigray’s, underscoring that the merger did not resolve the deepest center-periphery dispute in the federation. [9]
Abiy Ahmed’s Hegemonistic Prosperity Party Cannot Save Ethiopia v1 (1)Download
Editor’s Note: Views in the article do not necessarily reflect the views of borkena.com
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