Thread by @TsedaleLemma

This review by @TomGardner18 for @ForeignPolicy makes a compelling, easy to digest points about what's arguably a complex topic in contemporary Ethiopia.👌
foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/21/wil…
***Here is a thread of my reflection. (We don't do that these days but Tom's analysis is worth it.)

Tom's review of the books by Mulugeta G/Hiwot & Terrence Lyons, coupled with his own lived experience, is what makes this review a must read by everyone.

But this thread is about a few salient points that I think are either omitted, simply overlooked or need additional points.

Omitted: Ever since its creation as a party, OPDO/ODP, its leadership & rank & file (except for a few of them here & there -but they never made it anyway), existed in an ideologically vacuous space,devoid of the culture & discipline required to build a political infrastructure...

..let alone out of the ruins of EPRDF's decapitation.This was keenly overseen by -ironically - on one but ODP's Abiy,a man who hails from a party with no history, political culture & discipline to engage in critical political ideology.
(NP:As Tom pointed out ADP has its own role)

Overlooked:Tom made 3 main points highlighting how fast PM Abiy has undone EPRDF. All 3 points were not explained in the 2 books he reviewed, so they are his (I disagree with point 3) & he overlooked another angle: the angle that the rest of ODP's political class had no option.

Precisely b/se the leadership of ODP- from top to bottom-lived & functioned in that ideologically vacuous space & a space deprived of the stories & culture of heroism that Mulugeta eloquently described the early TPLF with, PM Abiy, with his "Medemer" gaslighted his way so easily.

Although PM Abiy garnered a critical support from his own ODP (in large part out of no option to confront him, but also, to a considerable extent,out of bullying & internal bickering), the story across all the other parties that signed up for PP is no d/t:from ADP to SEPDM to SDP

Additional points: for me, the biggest challenge facing PM Abiy (almost all are his own making), & the country, more than the orchestrated, supposed demise of EPRDF, is the prospect of a decapitated EPRDF governing Ethiopia even as it enters a permanent vegetative state.

As Tom explained, "it has simply been rebranded"; & it's more likely that "the party-state-people complex" explained in Terrence's book, will continue to define Abiy's PP.

This, in & of itself, may not come as a major headache, considering EPRDF's deep rooted political culture.

But this time it's coming loaded with newly assertive demands, and dos & don'ts from the apolitical actors who are crawling around 4killo leveraging their fame & access to power, & who have occupied the political space left in the wake of the decapitated EPRDF & the unborn PP.

Despite the mind boggling, relentless indoctrination, using gov't money, PM Abiy's "Medemer" will not sit well with the rank & file of party apparatchik across the country because, unlike TPLF's mass indoctrination of revolutionary democracy, "Medemer" is being mediated by...

...the spiritual & psychological councilors, as well as the out-of touch elites that the PM kept in his circle. That's not to mention the deficit in its content to replace a political infrastructure hardened by half a century leftist (and combative) political ideology.

Finally, Tom's review sees the fate of Ethiopia from the sole prism of EPRDF's fate. Indeed, as a "party so closely entwined with the state" such sober reflections are in order.

But I argue that we should see & imagine Ethiopia beyond Abiy's PP. This becomes more important...

...especially now that many more political actors are entering the political space that was exclusively controlled by EPRDF for 28 years.

So the chance that a decapitated EPRDF could decide the fate of the republic solo will eventually wear off;& that will be on no one but Abiy.