As the day draws to an end, it’s safe to say that the Ethiopian state under the admin of PM Abiy has quietly erased #Ginbot20 (May 28/1991), the date that ushered in the last political settlement, which, in 1995, reconstituted the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (FDRE).
Few things to say. This year’s May 28 comes in the backdrop of a brutal war against the major protagonist, TPLF, which coalesced a host of other rebel groups on a 4 yr political settlement between 1991-95 before the founding constitution of today’s 🇪🇹was adopted.
The process...
The process...
was imperfect & sidelined key players; & the Ethiopian state that was reconstituted thereof was haunted by the absence of these players.
But May 28 paved the way that led to the multiple nations & nationalities in Ethiopia to reimagine a new hope & a place they can call home.
But May 28 paved the way that led to the multiple nations & nationalities in Ethiopia to reimagine a new hope & a place they can call home.
Fast forward to 2021, 🇪🇹 finds itself in a brutal civil war against not just the TPLF (although the war’s conductors try to say so), but the ideals it embodies. We are at war with not just the TPLF, but the identity & structure of the state it, along with others, reconstituted.
Today’s Ethiopian state, together with its arch enemy Isaias, isn’t only cannibalising Ethiopian lives & ideas, but it’s also at war with how it identifies itself.
When PM Abiy recently said we should not use “peoples” but “people” (prelude of FDRE constitution) he meant that.
When PM Abiy recently said we should not use “peoples” but “people” (prelude of FDRE constitution) he meant that.
And when hardcore Ethiopian nationalist camp relentlessly vulgarise & desecrate words such as 'Oromumma' & ‘Tegaru' & campaigns to purge them out of the lexicon of our library of self identification, by extension self determination, you know the war isn’t just against the TPLF.
Sadly what makes many believe the erasure of May 28 as that of TPLF is the failure to recognise that at the heart of 🇪🇹‘s perpetual wars on Tigray& Tegaru collective every other decade is the chronic lack of knowledge of the Tegaru psych & how sacrosanct the right to self rule is
As we brace to reconstitute the Ethiopian state in the absence of its key players, yet again, we’ll remember May 28 not only by what we went after to destroy, but by our last memories of a state, its identity & form as it was formed in 1995, but one we already failed to replicate
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