[By Bereket Kiros]
The TPLF leadership was compromised then and continued to fall apart due to its stupor, lethargy, and corrupted, fragmented leadership, opening space for TIRA to squeeze through to the premiership of Tigrai.
There is little time to waste debating and speculating on Tigrai’s fate. What I witnessed in the last three years is enough to convince anyone of the gravity of Tigra’s political, economic, and social problems.
Unless some drastic measures are taken, the various conflicts in our region become ever more intractable and exact a horrifying toll in blood and massive economic dislocation. The continuing severity of these crises and their repercussions will depend on whether or not the Tigrai Interim Regional Administration (TIRA) assumes a realistic posture or new leadership rises and commits to finding equitable solutions that can endure.
We must remember, though, that the turmoil we experienced in 2023 may intensify in 2025 because of the continuing regional crisis of leadership and the challenges posed by hardline TPLF leadership—the question is what must be done to change the dynamics to solve some of these conflicts.
Betrayal
The TIRA conflict with Debretsion leadership is the most intractable conflict that has consumed and failed to realise the Pretoria agreement. It has been further impaired by their leadership’s refusal to recognise each other’s rights. The TPLF leaders betrayed their people for power, failing to safeguard their people first, which made coexistence inevitable.
The Tigrai genocide would be recalled as perhaps the most horrific humanitarian disaster in the modern history of Tigrai. Given the leadership crisis, the hour calls for new visionary and courageous leaders who can recognise that their people’s future security and prosperity still rests on the only viable option—the Pretoria agreement, fully implemented. The TPLF leaders must abandon their grandiose delusion to seize power by manipulation.
Since the genocidal war, the political turbulence is overshadowing TPLF’s past history. The TPLF must change its political discourse and malicious propaganda that are designed to confuse the people, blackmail, and scapegoat its opponents.
Beyond that, however, we are witnessing that extremism and xenophobia are on the rise, millions of Tegaru refugees are on the move, and poverty and economic dislocation are rampant, which together significantly contribute to instability and violence.
Sadly, these developments and the PP leadership crisis may worsen before a new generation of leaders can rise and resolve many of these conflicts humanely, passionately, and equitably to ensure their durability. The age-old wisdom expressed in the Amharic language tells us the time-tested truth that once there is a serious crack in glassware, no mending can restore it to its original use. By analogy, if there is a serious breach of trust in a tightly held organisation, that organisation will not survive in its original form. ብርሌ ከነ ቃ፣ አይሆንም ዕቃ።
TPLF leadership had already made serious errors that cannot be corrected easily by their being in office. The TPLF must be removed from power if Tigrai can come out of this genocide. We must start from square one in choosing new visionary and nationalist leadership.