A ‘Democratic Front’ at odds with democracy

Taye Negussie (PhD)

Few rhetoric terms have so pervaded as the term democracy in the political discourse of the Ethiopian People Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) that controls the Ethiopian government since 1991. Far too often, the front proclaims that the very cause that drove it into armed liberation struggle was its firm resolve to carry through the much repressed Ethiopian people into a democratic system where freedom, justice, equality and the right to self-rule will unconditionally and fully prevail.