The Coalition of Ethiopian Federalist Forces () was a coalition of Ethiopian political parties from 2019 to 2020 that included the

Tigray People's Liberation Front The Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF; ), also known as the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front, is a left-wing Ethnic nationalism, ethnic nationalist, paramilitary group, and the former ruling party of Ethiopia. It was classified as a ter ...

(TPLF), the former ruling party that lost power in 2018.

Background

In August 2019, the former dominant political party in Ethiopia, the

(TPLF), that lost power in 2018, proposed creating a new ethno-federalist alliance. According to René Lefort and William Davison writing in '' Ethiopian Insight'', the TPLF was likely to have difficulty creating an ethno-federalist alliance because it was "reviled from all parts of the Ethiopian political spectrum as the party that either created a despised ethnic federalism to divide-and-rule in its narrow ethnocentric interests, or the control-freaks that refused to allow true multinational federalism to breathe through its authoritarian blanket." During 3–4 December 2019, the TPLF organised the second of two forums for "rescuing the constitution and multi-ethnic Federal System" in

Mekelle Mekelle (), or Mek'ele, is a List of zones of Ethiopia, special zone and capital city, capital of the Tigray Region of Ethiopia. Mekelle was formerly the capital of Enderta province, Enderta Awrajja, awraja in Tigray Province, Tigray. It is locate ...

. '' Borkena'' described the attendance as "not great". The coordinator of the forum, Mulugeta, stated that fifty national and ethnic-based parties and 700 prominent individuals attended the forum.

Creation

The Coalition of Ethiopian Federalist Forces was created in Mekelle. On 14 May 2020, when the general election scheduled for August 2020 was delayed by the federal government due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

, the Coalition held a meeting in

Addis Ababa Addis Ababa (; ,) is the capital city of Ethiopia, as well as the regional state of Oromia. With an estimated population of 2,739,551 inhabitants as of the 2007 census, it is the largest city in the country and the List of cities in Africa b ...

and stated that it supported the decision, while the TPLF opposed the decision. On 25 June, at the Coalition's fourth meeting, in Addis Ababa, the Coalition decided to dismiss the TPLF and the

Ethiopian Democratic Union The Ethiopian Democratic Union (Amharic: የኢትዮጵያ ዴሞክራሲያዊ ህብረት) or EDU, also known as Teranafit (formerly a separate group based in Shire before it merged with the EDU), was one of the political parties that formed ...

if they missed any more meetings. Reasons cited for dismissing the two parties included: "dividing the members of the coalition and creating pressure"; "exploiting the coalition as a means to estabilisethe country"; "missing meetings and insisting that meetings must take place in Mekelle"; and TPLF's decision to hold the

2020 Tigray regional election On 9 September 2020, the Ethiopian region of Tigray held an election for its state council. The election was considered illegal by the federal government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who postponed the 2020 general election earlier in the year ...

Structure

, Dereje Bekele was the chair of the Coalition. The Coalition claims to be constituted of 24 political parties.

Platforms, proposals

On 29 September 2020, a TPLF spokesperson proposed that a Coalition proposal posted on

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

be used to continue a legal form of government following what the TPLF said was the end of the government's mandate on 5 October 2020. The Coalition's text proposed the "formation of an independent technocratic caretaker government the composition of which reflects the diversity of the Ethiopian people ... in line with the constitution and in consultation with all political stake holders and will be in charge until such time the peace and national salvation conference comes up with an agreed solution to the political and constitutional problems."

References

{{Ethiopian political parties 2019 establishments in Ethiopia 2020 disestablishments in Ethiopia Defunct political party alliances in Ethiopia Ethiopian nationalism Federalist parties in Ethiopia Political parties disestablished in 2020 Political parties established in 2019