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 ETHIOPIA FACTS ABOUT TPLF TPLF'S TIGRAYAN TIGHTROPE |
| Edited by Fiona Lortan The split within the TPLF is not new, having first surfaced in the early 1990s, not long after the TPLF came to power. At heart, the split is ideological between the so-called ‘moderates’ and ‘hardliners’ within the party. During the long years of armed struggle against the Dergue regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam, the party was staunchly communist, and admired the political and economic policies of the Albanian model. By the time the TPLF over-threw the Dergue regime in 1991, how-ever, the international context had changed dramatically. Socialism was in retreat everywhere, free market economics had become the accepted orthodoxy, and the newly installed government in Addis Ababa had little choice but to accept the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank conditionalities of market liberalisation and privatisation. Meles, who ascended to power within the TPLF, embraced such policies with alacrity, and implemented them with a vigour that won him praise from the Bretton Woods institutions. But he was unable to assert his authority fully within the party, and ideological differences remained. Meles’s solution in the early 1990s was to banish the hardliners to Tigray, the political base of the party. Once in Tigray, the party militants continued to organise around a programme of ‘Greater Tigray’, and were often publicly critical of what they saw as a ‘weakening’ of the party’s ideology. They were also opposed to the perceived closeness of the ruling élite in Addis Ababa and Asmara, and of what they saw as a ‘selling out’ of the TPLF leadership to Eritrean demands. It was the activities of the TPLF hardliners in Tigray (including the publication of a map that incorporated parts of Eritrea into a Greater Tigray) that were partly responsible for the series of skirmishes in 1998 and that culminated in the all-out war with Eritrea. When the war broke out in early May 1998, Prime Minister Meles and some of the so-called ‘moderates’ around him (most notably Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin) appeared to prevaricate, and seemed reluctant to escalate to all-out war. It is also known that, at the time, Eritrean President Isayas Afewerki was trying desperately to contact Meles to resolve the crisis. President Isayas was certain that, given the high levels of trust that existed between the two leaders, a full-scale war could be warded off. It was thus that, at a TPLF central committee meeting held in May 1998, Meles came under vociferous criticism from members of his own party. A war council was established, and Meles disappeared from view for a number of days, with rumours abounding in Addis Ababa that he had been placed under arrest. In May 1998, Meles managed to ward off the challenge to his leadership, but at a price: he was forced into accepting the position of the more militant factions, and declare all-out war against Eritrea. Since then, many have believed that Meles has merely been biding his time before once again asserting his authority and independence from this faction. By mid-March 2001, he calculated that the time had come. The militants had become increasingly critical of the Ethiopian government’s economic policies. The war with Eritrea had placed severe strain on the Ethiopian economy, and this, combined with the drought and the withdrawal of donor assistance as a result of the war, revealed the Ethiopian economy’s continuing structural weaknesses. The government responded by increasing the pace of economic liberalisation and, as a result, Ethiopia has been able to negotiate a new aid package with the IMF, involving US $112 million over three years. Meles calculated that the time was ripe at the Central Committee meeting held in March. When he had banished the militants back to Tigray in the mid-1990s, many of them used their control of the provincial political apparatus to enrich themselves, in some case awarding themselves and their families state contracts. The war with Eritrea also provided them with further opportunities at self-enrichment, as they tied up transport and provisioning contracts. Thus, when the Central Committee meeting was opened, Meles had placed on the agenda the issues of corruption and undemocratic tendencies, a clear reference to the militants who had grouped themselves under the informal leadership of the former Defence Minister Siye Abraha (who had himself been named as a possible replacement leader for Meles in May 1998). The militant group objected, but Meles was able to retain the support of the majority of the Central Committee, though narrowly: 15 members of the committee supported Meles, while 12 members opposed him. Meles was able to prevail largely because he retained the support of key TPLF members such as Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin, Internal Affairs Minister Kinfe Gebremedhin and Sebhat Nega, TPLF founding leader. Meles may have prevailed for now, but the situation has not been resolved. Meles’s strategy in the early 1990s to deal with the problem of factionalism and ideological divergence within the party, was to banish the problem to Tigray, with ultimately disastrous consequences. The split has not only revealed Meles’s vulnerable position within the TPLF, it also threatens to weaken the overall status of the TPLF in the EPRDF. Already at a press conference to announce the expulsion of the dissident members from the party, Meles was seen flanked by non-TPLF members of the ERPDF. The question now is how even his supporters within the TPLF will react to the possibility of a weakening of the TPLF’s hegemony. If Meles is to secure his position in the EPRDF at the expense of the TPLF, he may still be vulnerable. But to deal with the militant elements in the TPLF will require ruthless action on his part, and it is not known whether he has the stomach for this. — FL
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TPLF's Tigrayan tightrope
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