Ámbito de criminalización de la agresión conducta de Estado.

The EPRDF coalition led by its pioneer, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) promised democratization and eventually adopted a new constitution that made such intentions clear from the outset. The practicality of what is written in the Ethiopian constitution (which is ratified in 1994), however, would immediately become questionable. Inquiring ‘where Ethiopia is going’ now became a central question. Nevertheless, I argue that as one could see from the political history of Menelik II and Haile Selassie I and how the patrimonial political culture impeded any prospects of democratization in their political eras, and how the Dergue’s reluctance to answer the question of freedom and equality by prioritizing the creation and implementation of a nationalist agenda, that are all nothing but systematization of authoritarian survival, it is clear that these pre- vious regimes’ legacy also influenced the EPRDF led political regime to function under a political structure that has become an obstacle to democratic consolidation efforts at present times. The Ethiopian elites that vie to rule a state of multinational and multi-ethnic groups, a nation of more than eighty languages and a complex history that escaped the era of colonialism by fighting to- gether as one nation, are devoid of common national agendas and issues of consensus remain puz- zling to this day.

Why the political elite both at the center of political power in various regimes and the elites behind the political rebellion would fail to agree on the commonalities of the need for the political and economic equality in the type of Ethiopian state they envisioned however, is not a mystery.

The central political power in the modern Ethiopian state has always been decided by the north- erners such as the Amhara and Tigray political elites whose cultural similarities, their dominant Orthodox Christianity, and history had been at the center of their political strength. The difference however, was that while political elites in Tigray, in particular Emperor Yohannes IV, had nation- alist agendas, the elites that followed within the Tigray political block shifted from their nationalist agenda towards a more focused agenda of the need to limit the stronger Amhara dominance that followed the death of Emperor Yohannes IV.42 While the Amhara elite, with the exception of growing Amhara educated elite in the era of Haile Selassie I, remain focused on the need to bro- kering ethnic differences by creating a centralized government structure that becomes a basis for a Pan-Ethiopian identity and thus unity, which they also considered as an ultimate solution that serves better in diminishing ethnic tensions and potential conflicts. The Oromos of Ethiopia, argu- ably a majority ethnic group in the country, with a deeply strong ethnically limited democratic political culture, that had relied on the impressive Gada system, (which had managed diverse Oromo political interests harmoniously), had however, been removed from the political discourse in much of the modern Ethiopian history. Such a reality was not taken lightly by the newly growing Oromo educated elite and as a result started to demand not only greater freedoms to this highly excluded but extremely powerful ethnic group but the elites also made their intentions clear by stating the fact that establishing a country for the Oromos, the Oromian state, independent of the Ethiopian state that they considered oppressive and unrepairable, should be their ultimate goal.

42 _{The TPLF, at the initial stages of anti-government struggle had published a ‘Manifesto’ that detailed}

their political goals as they waged the armed resistance representing the political disappointments of the TIgrayan Elite. The Document, among others, mentions the ‘Amhara’ as the enemy of Tigrayans and thus their dominance had to be defeated. Moreover, it also chronicles that after the downfall of Emperor Yo- hannes IV and the coming to power of Emperor Menelik II of Shewa Amhara, the influence of the Tig- rayan elites declined in the Ethiopian state. Thus, TPLF leadership insisted that that had to be corrected. For more, see Tigray Peoples Liberation Front political manifesto published in February, 1968.

Hence, given the political programs or ambitions among the three ethnic groups’ political elites were difficult to mend, the Ethiopian state’s fate had to rely on miraculous political circum- stances that might lead the way for one of those influential groups’ political elites to change course in their ideological dogmas and political programs. Such a conundrum would be solved when the Tigrayan elite that eventually dumped their separatist agenda (although the TPLF remains a liber- ation front, in name, to this day) by providing a new agenda of compromised Ethiopian state via an ethnic federal arrangement with ambitions of granting equal political and economic freedoms on the basis of a larger emphasis on group rights. An Ethiopian Oromo political opposition leader and a renowned political scientist, Merera Gudina (2001) in fact sums up such developments as, the Ethiopian state was initially a “political thesis” of the Amhara, which faced the growing “anti- Ethiopian thesis” of the Oromo, which later had to be saved by the federal “synthesis” of the Tigray political elites 43. Here, the question becomes whether such new promises of answering the ethnic question of political and economic equality becomes a reality.

But why did the nation get here in the first place? The neo-patrimonial political culture, which was manifested through its rewarding of loyalty and kinship as a basis for political trusts and opportunities in terms of how this dissertation looked at the patterns of elite interaction, might have addressed the question and could could be an adequate answer for the failings of the state in the eras discussed thus far. However, it is also very crucial to discuss the various political scenarios

43 _{Merera Gudina’s work shows that despite the so called ‘grand failures’ in the varying political regimes}

and the emerging road blocks remain a challenge, the creative ways of the Tigrayan elite with their under- standing of the minority status in fact might have saved the nation from a possible disintegration. For more, see: Gudina, Merera. Ethiopia: Competing ethnic nationalisms and the quest for democracy, 1960-2000. Shaker Pub., 2003.

that might have saved the nation from continuing ethnic tensions that kept the competition among the ethnically organized political elite alive. Here after, I discuss the new era of TPLF dominated EPRDF Coalition’s rule of the country and how the political culture I discussed in the large part transforms itself in the new political era.