How Tigray peace deal is changing Ethiopia's story
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Staff reporter GAROWE ONLINE
- Posted On 14-12-2022, 01:44PM
ADDIS ABABA - The recently signed Tigray peace deal could significantly shape Ethiopia's politics by bridging reconciliation among the over 80 communities, who have been intolerant against one another ever since Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed assumed power in the Horn of African nation which is struggling with instability.
Last month, the Tigray People's Liberation Front [TPLF] rebels signed a peace deal with the Ethiopian government after talks were brokered by the African Union. Former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo and his Kenyan counterpart Uhuru Kenyatta were instrumental in the mediation team.
And parliamentarians elected from the Oromia region want the government of Abiy Ahmed to reciprocate a similar approach, noting that it's about time the Oromo Liberation Front [OLA] is brought to the negotiation table for the sake of peace and tranquility in the country.
About 80 MPs convened and discussed security situations in the Oromia region on 05 December last week, before drafting the letter which urges the government among other things, to make a peace deal with Oromo Liberation Army, a rebel group operating in the region, in the same manner, it did with Tigrayan forces, an MP told the BBC’s Afaan Oromoo service.
“The Oromos have suffered in lack of peace. Killings and displacements have continued. The difficult situations the Oromo people are facing have persisted for a long and don’t seem to have an end,” MP Buzayehu Degefa said, adding that, “the peace that has been made in Tigray has to be replicated in Oromia, and the people should be able to live in peace”.
“Tigray was without peace yesterday, and there is now peace somehow. This needs to happen here [in Oromia]. Be it with those armed, or non-armed, negotiations need to take place with all who have stakes in this,” he added.
He said the security situation of the Wollo Oromos living in the Amhara Region, border demarcation issues, and the issue of teaching Afaan Oromo in Addis Ababa among other things have been included in the letter signed by the MPs.
Buzayehu said a meeting has already been held with the speaker of the House Tagese Chafo who assured the team that “there are promising directives going forward, and that peace will prevail”. Oromo region is where PM Abiy Ahmed hails from but it has been leading in terms of violence.
Last year, Abiy Ahmed was at loggerheads with media entrepreneur Jawar Mohamed in what led to deadly confrontations within the capital Addis Ababa. The two leaders are muscling over the control of the region and the country's politics according to observers.
The fighting in Tigray almost tore the country apart but there are deliberate efforts to reconcile the community with the rest of Ethiopia, something which the MPs from the Oromo region want to be replicated in there for the sake of stability.
In a statement released last week following the latest killings of civilians in East Wollega, Oromia, the opposition, Oromo Federalist Congress [OFC] said, “the peace pact that ignores the problem of Oromia does not treat the citizens of the country equally” while urging the international community to “put the necessary political pressure” on the government to solve the political disputes in the country through political dialogue.
Thousands of people are believed to have died in the Tigray region with the United Nations estimating the deaths to be "more than those in Ukraine and Russian war" according to UN boss Antonio Guterres. The war has subsided following the truce which was signed in Pretoria and Nairobi.
GAROWE ONLINE
