Game Over; The End of Ethiopia’s TPLF Regime

Game Over! The Tigray People's Liberation Front which has ruled

Ethiopia since 1991 has been ousted from power in Ethiopia, replaced

by a new breed of leadership who have quickly moved to reassure the

people that a real change is in the making.
This past Wednesday, June 20, was a busy day for the new Prime

Minister Abiy, an ethnic Oromo, Ethiopia's largest nationality,

traveling to the site of the latest ethnic massacre and addressing the

leadership of the Gurage community calling on them to end the ethnic

violence and bring peace to their land by dialogue and mediation. This

was all broadcast live for all Ethiopians, both at home and abroad, to

see via satellite television and warmly received by those to whom he

directly spoke.
Next door, here in Eritrea we sat glued to our tv's late into the

night watching Ethiopian television broadcast the address our

President Issias Aferwerki had made early that morning during our

annual Martyrs Day commemoration where he held out an olive branch of

peace to our neighbors in Ethiopia, repeated over and over. The

Ethiopian P.M. then went live and thanked the Eritrean President and

promised a future of peace and prosperity in brotherly respect. And he

did it in Tigrinya, the de facto national language of Eritrea.

We could only pinch ourselves in disbelief, to have our long time

enemies in Ethiopia suddenly change so positively, I mean EVERYTHING

the Ethiopian P.M. has been saying could not be more true.

The Ethiopian P.M. has gone on tv and described his governments past

actions, and he acknowledges he was a part of this, as “terrorist”

regarding its treatment of its political prisoners. He has addressed

the T.P.L.F regimes past policy of divide and rule via instigation of

ethnic bloodshed and spoke to what needs to be done to heal divisions

and move forward.
Here in Eritrea what we are hearing is music to our ears for the

Ethiopian P.M. is saying just what our President Issias Aferwerki has

been saying for two decades now, that we shouldn't be fighting,

instead uniting, to build a more humane and just society absent of

foreign intervention.
If this new Ethiopian leader manages to stay alive, there is hope for

Ethiopia, that the nationalities, starting with the Oromo's, the

largest, who have been calling for independence, will reconsider their

quest for separation and continue as one country.
While one must respect the right to self determination reality is that

the “Prison House of Nations” that has been Ethiopia up to now is best

transformed into a modern, peoples democracy rather than torn asunder

and left to fend for themselves as small, independent countries. This

new P.M. could be the one to give them hope and allow a violent

upheaval to be avoided.
The Horn of Africa, the Horn of Hunger, the Horn of War and Famine may

be seeing the birth of a new era, where Ethiopia no longer invades its

neighbors at the behest of the USA. Where Ethiopians are able to leave

behind their lives of hunger and thirst, of being cold, sick and

illiterate and start to feed, clothe, house, medicate and educate its

people, and turn a perpetual famine victim into a modern, prosperous

land.
For us here in Eritrea after 20 years of war followed by no war, no

peace, we have hardened ourselves to not seeing a light at the end of

the tunnel. This new leadership in Ethiopia is almost to much to

believe, its almost like a dream to us still. Could we really live as

brothers and sisters with our huge neighbor to our south?

Just as with North Korea the Trump Regime has broken with decades of

past policy towards the the Horn of Africa and allowed common sense

and experience to hold sway. It may be just pragmatism, but those

veteran diplomats in the US State Department know they have little

choice in the matter, any further support for the TPLF regime would

have been counterproductive and damage American credibility let alone

result in the disintegration of Ethiopia, possibly followed by a South

Sudan scenario.
One thing is for sure, and Eritrean President Issias Aferworki said it

with glee when he spoke at our Martyrs Day commemoration, “Game Over!”

for the T.P.L.F regime, shocking all in attendance into spontaneous

applause. What we have only dreamed about is now reality here in the

Horn of Africa, and if the seasonal rains arrive this year and another

drought is averted, then we can truly be blessed with

“selam(peace) and rain for the Horn of Africa”.
Thomas C. Mountain is an independent journalist and historian in

Eritrea, living and reporting from here since 2006. See

thomascmountain on Facebook or best reach him at thomascmountain at g

mail dot com