Ethiopia elects first Somali as Senate speaker after Ms. Ibrahim's resignation

ADDIS ABABA - Ethiopia's Upper House recorded history on Wednesday following the election of Aden Farah Ibrahim as the speaker, effectively becoming the first ethnic Somali, a minority group in the Eastern part of the country, to lead the house.

Senators unanimously voted for Farah, who has been serving as Vice President of the Somali regional state of Ethiopia and will now replace Ms. Keria Ibrahim, a member of Tigray People's Liberation Front [TPLF], who resigned on Monday.

Farah has been deputizing Mustafa Muhammad Omer, the regional leader of Somali, a region that is famously known as Ogaden. Traditionally, the region is treated as a minority in the Federal Republic of Ethiopia, which is a preconceived ethnic Amhara and Oromo.

During the Wednesday sitting, the 112-member house also approved an extension of the Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's term for at least one year. The term of the current administration was set to end in August 2019.

However, the National Elections Board of Ethiopia [NEBE] postponed the August elections due to raging Coronavirus pandemic, which has so far left close to 2,200 people infected. The Horn of Africa nation has recorded at least 20 deaths so far.

The new speaker is the first ethnic Somali to hold such a lucrative post. The House of Federation is the highest guardian of the Constitution in Ethiopia, further the authority which comes with the office.

Keria Ibrahim, the immediate outgoing speaker, quit due to unending wrangles between her TPLF and Abiy's newly formed Prosperity Party [PP]. The PP was formed after the dissolution of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front [EPRDF] which had been the ruling coalition since 1991.

TPLF opposed the merger of the small parties and has since rubbished postponement of elections, consequently, calling for regional polls in Tigray region of Ethiopia, where it enjoys huge support.

In a televised speech, Keria accused Abiy's government of taking away Ethiopians' sovereign rights, without elaborating. She was widely understood to refer to the government's decision to postpone the elections, which effectively allowed Abiy to continue ruling beyond the expiry of his term.

"I can't be an accomplice when the constitution is being violated, and a dictatorial government is being formed," she said. "I have resigned not to be collaborator [with] such a historical mistake."

Her resignation underscored the deteriorating relationship between Abiy and his ruling Prosperity Party and the TPLF, Kjetil Tronvoll, professor of peace and conflict studies at Bjorknes University in Oslo, told Al-Jazeera.

"If the process is left unabated, it may lead to an open confrontation," he said.

Abiy took power in Africa's second-most populous country in 2018 and went on to roll out a series of reforms allowing greater freedoms in what had long been one of the continent's most repressive states.

But the reforms have made it possible for long-held grievances against the government's decades of the harsh rule to resurface and emboldened regional power-brokers such as the TPLF to seek more power for their ethnic groups.

Dr. Ahmed won the Nobel Peace Prize award last year ostensibly for his tremendous contribution towards reconciling Addis Ababa and Asmara, who had been at loggerheads for almost two decades due to boundary disputes.

GAROWE ONLINE