In May 2019 Borkena summarized an argument from a prominent Ethiopian political scientist that the way federalism had been implemented was a main driver of the country’s political problems.
Ethnic federal maps, language rules, and regional security forces had long been praised by some as self-rule and condemned by others as a machine for division. By 2019 that debate was no longer academic. Street violence and displacement already showed how institutional design and elite competition mixed.
Readers do not need to accept one scholar’s verdict to keep the dated claim. It shows how public argument in Abiy Ahmed’s early years kept returning to the federal constitution itself, not only to personalities.
Kept as politics archive, the Borkena note records a named line of criticism against federal implementation before later wars made the same question even more deadly.
Sources: Borkena