If the Prime Minister chooses to lean on his personal popularity, could he obtain and sustain enough political support ? There is no easy answer or quick fix to the gathering predicament.
“I don’t have any “aim” when I write my articles, other than to present the situation as I understand it. I don’t have any intention, right, or ability to interfere with, let alone alter, Ethiopia’s political course.”
"Abiy Ahmed has already gone down in history for addressing the pressing demands of the vast majority of Ethiopians... But Abiy Ahmed made three mammoth strategic errors."
The dramatic changes of the last months have moved Ethiopia away from “the gates of hell ”, but all options are still on the table, from the worst to the best.
Ultimately, the only route to its successful end is regulation through institutional mechanisms, which means elections, whether early or within the normal electoral cycle.
What is urgent is to bring down the tension by focusing the hopes and energies of the activists on a political way out, in the form of a tested, unchallengeable mechanism.
First there are the undisputed events. Then there are the media reactions, and these – apart from a few rare exceptions, among them some of Ethiopia’s private media – have been perplexing.
There is every sign that Ethiopia is plunging into a crisis whose scale, intensity, and multiple and interdependent drivers are unprecedented since the founding of the regime in 1991.
