Toronto – On Monday news emerged that the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) is holding political dialogue with the Prosperity Party for a political merger.
Wazema radio cited sources to report that the point of difference during the dialogue was TPLF’s demand to join the party while maintaining its TPLF status and based on equal partnership – the same arrangement that existed during the now defunct Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF).
However, according to the source, the ruling party advanced a view that the merger is based on the proportion of the population and that it is complete. It means that there will be no more TPLF within the ruling party once it joined it.
The TPLF on Tuesday has released a brief statement in Tigrigna on its social media page in response to the news of a political merger with Abiy Ahmed’s party. It called news of a political merger with the ruling party a “white lie.”
While not denying that it is having a conversation with the Prosperity Party, TPLF said the talk is on what it called the post-Pretoria agreement “relative peace” – and how to strengthen and broaden it.
The TPLF further said that it has a fundamental (ideological) difference with the Prosperity Party.
Adem Farah, Prosperity Party Deputy Chairman, earlier this month traveled to Mekelle where he held a political dialogue with TPLF leaders. He did not say the dialogue was about merger. In a recent interview with the state media, he described the purpose of his trip as something that has something to do with creating a political “enabling environment.” Zara Media, an ethnic Tigray media outlet that is believed to be an ardent supporter of the TPLF, on Tuesday said that TPLF leaders have been frequenting visits to Addis Ababa for which the ruling party /Federal government made accommodation arrangements at the Skylight Hotel.
The TPLF was dismissed as a legal entity by the National Electoral Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) after the Ethiopian parliament, in May 2021, designated it as a terrorist organization on grounds of the attack on the Northern Command of the Ethiopian Defense Force and the military campaigns it undertook to the Afar and Amhara regions of Ethiopia where it killed thousands of civilians, wounded many more and destroyed state and private properties.
There have been reports of a political alliance between the ruling party and the TPLF after the Pretoria agreement the purpose of which, as speculated by some politicized Ethiopians on social media, is against Fano forces and Eritrea.
One of the factors that caused the devastating two-year war between the TPLF and Abiy Ahmed’s Federal government – which is said to have affected the Afar and Amhara regions as much as Tigray- is that the TPLF opposed the formation of the Prosperity Party on ideological grounds and declined to join it when all the rest of the then ruling coalition – EPRDF – members and its partners – joined to form a merger as one party. The wars is estimated to have claimed as many as one million lives from Tigray, Amhara and Afar regions – among others.
Source: Borkena
