Open Democracy

May 25, 2011

René Lefort

Reporter on sub-saharan Africa since the 1970s for Le Monde, Le Monde diplomatique, Libération, Le Nouvel Observateur.

Meles Zenawi has been protecting himself from any Arab-spring copy-cat movements in Ethiopia. On balance, it is unlikely that the opposition is strong enough to mount the kind of challenge seen in Egypt and Tunisia. Conditions are not seen to be as brutally unjust in Ethiopia, and no one doubts that the army would be loyal to the Tigray-dominated regime. But there may be surprises yet

“Beka!” “Enough!” In the wake of the Arab uprisings, this is the watchword of mysterious opponents to the ruling regime circulating on internet sites hosted outside Ethiopia and in a few tracts being handed out inside the country. They are calling on the people to take to the streets on 28 May. Exactly twenty years earlier, a coalition of armed ethnic movements, led by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, overthrew Major Mengistu Haile Mariam’s Marxist[...]

[Published in AidNews - Read the original article]