![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/EPRDF-meeting.jpg?resize=770%2C424&ssl=1\")
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\u201cIf there is anyone who should take credit for putting up with six weeks of political drama played by members of the ruling party EPRDF, it should be the Ethiopian people,\u201d said Bantayehu Yilma, a middle-class retailer in Merkato, Africa\u2019s largest open market found at the heart of Ethiopia\u2019s capital, Addis Abeba.<\/p>\n
A keen political observer who says \u201cpolitics is what makes or breaks my business,\u201d Bantayehu is not the exception. \u201cI know many of my trading partners who have either suspended or significantly scaled back their business activities expecting the worst after the sudden resignation of Prime Minister Hailemarim Desalegn.\u201d<\/p>\n
What Bantayehu and millions others did not fathom, however, is the fact that PM Hailemariam\u2019s resignation was not sudden. It was known to the heavy weight EPRDF party apparatchiks \u201cfor at least two months\u201d prior to Feb 15\/2018, the day PM Hailemariam announced he was resigning<\/a>.<\/p>\n According to a party insider, \u201cthe idea was floated and approved during the 17 days closed door meeting by the executives of the four parties\u201d who gathered to seek solutions to the rapidly deteriorating political crisis that gripped the nation. Saving the party, they agreed, was tantamount to saving the nation. A stunning admittance in itself\u00a0 that shows the revolutionary democrats treat the nation\u2019s fate as one and the same with the party.<\/p>\n Fissures (and serious ones) \u00a0<\/strong> <\/span><\/p>\n Three years of persistent anti-government protests in Oromia, Amhara and the southern regional states have eventually morphed to create enough weight under which the EPRDF, previously known as a tightly knit coalition of four major and five satellite parties, began to crack.<\/p>\n Months of verbal and administrative frictions among the leaders, rank and file members and social media warriors of the different parties have on various occasions laid bare the growing interparty<\/span> fissures within a party that governed the country for a quarter century and took pride in its\u00a0 motto of \u201cunity of purpose\u201d.\u00a0 Cracks began to appear particularly between Oromia vs Ethio-Somali, and Amhara vs Tigray regional states (which are, according to Ethiopia\u2019s federal dispensation, governed by OPDO,\u00a0 ESPDP (the Ethiopian Somali People\u2019s Democratic Party), ANDM and TPLF respectively),<\/p>\n Worse, the spillover effects<\/a> of the growing interparty dysfunctions have led to the deaths of hundreds of civilians and the biggest internal displacement of more than a million Oromos and ethnic Somalis from villages, towns, and cities bordering the Oromia and Ethiopian Somali regional states; and the displacement of thousands of ethnic Tigrayans from some parts of the country, especially from the Oromia and Amhara regional states.<\/p>\n For many astute observers of Ethiopian politics, these events revealed not just the cardinal signs of interparty fissures but EPRDF\u2019s possible decomposition. […] CONTINUE READING<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In his acceptance speech, Ethiopia’s newly appointed Prime Minister Dr. Abiy Ahmed spoke everything Ethiopians in and outside the country were eagerly waiting to hear: A desperately needed message of unity among the politically fractured and polarized Ethiopians; a speech that began by paying tribute to Ethiopians who sacrificed …<\/p>\n The post Analysis: Dr. Abiy Ahmed becomes a prime minister the legacy EPRDF fought against to the bitter end. What went behind closed doors and how could that shape his premiership?<\/a> appeared first on Addis Standard<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[178,2991],"class_list":["post-219103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ethiopian-news","tag-africa","tag-ethiopian-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-UZV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219103"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":219185,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219103\/revisions\/219185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}