Ethiopian Democratic Unity Party
The Ethiopian Democratic Unity Party ( English Ethiopian Democratic Unity Party , abbreviation EDUP ), formerly known as the Ethiopian Democratic Union ( English Ethiopian Democratic Union , abbreviation EDU) or Teranafit (previously a separate group in Shire before it merged with the EDU ), is a conservative - royalist party in Ethiopia , which stood as a rebel group in opposition to the Derg regime until 1991 .
The Ethiopian Democratic Union merged with the Ethiopian Democratic Party to form what is now the Ethiopian Democratic Unity Party (EDUP). The Ethiopian Democratic Unity Party is one of the two largest opposition party alliances among the political parties that make up the United Ethiopian Democratic Forces (UEDF). In the 2005 parliamentary elections , the UEDF won a total of 52 of the 627 seats in the House of Representatives .
history
The organization was founded as the Ethiopian Democratic Union in September 1974, directly following the military coup in the same year when the Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie was overthrown and a new military government was installed. The Ethiopian Democratic Union (EDU) pursued a conservative agenda from the start. Founded under the leadership of the Prince of Tigray , Ras Mengesha Seyyum, the party base of the Ethiopian Democratic Union consisted of large landowners who resisted the nationalization of their lands, monarchists, high-ranking military officers who were replaced by mutineers who carried out the coup against the emperor have led, as well as reactionary and centrist dissenters within the Marxist-Leninist Derg.
From mid-1976 to 1977, the Ethiopian Democratic Union broadcast radio programs to Ethiopia from Sudan , and at the same time launched a military campaign to Begemder , which nearly took Gondar . Although democratic ideals were raised by the party, which also vaguely advocated a constitutional monarchy , its political program was never clear, a mistake which later weakened the Ethiopian Democratic Union itself and led to the division of its various political factions. Ethnic rivalries between Tigray loyalists around Ras Mengesha and the non-Tigray elements of the Ethiopian Democratic Union further widened the split.
Other rebel movements, such as the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party in Begemder and the All-Ethiopian Socialist Movement , mostly opposed the Ethiopian Democratic Union, fought against it and even helped the Derg forces, the EDU, to drive them out of the regions they occupied. In 1978 the leadership of the EDU split over serious political differences that continued to develop. The EDU finally withdrew from the armed struggle against the Derg regime. It remained active with the Ethiopian communities in exile, particularly in Europe and Sudan.
After the People's Liberation Front of Tigray and its allied parties within the Revolutionary Democratic Front of the Ethiopian Peoples took power in the country, the Ethiopian Democratic Union reorganized itself as a legal opposition party in the capital Addis Ababa . The party even had a representative at the conference in London , which was supposed to establish the interim government of Ethiopia.
credentials
- ↑ Wolbert GC Smidt, in: Abdulkader Saleh, Nicole Hirt, Wolbert GC Smidt, Rainer Tetzlaff (eds.): Peace spaces in Eritrea and Tigray under pressure: Identity construction, social cohesion and political stability , LIT Verlag, Münster 2008, ISBN 978-3 -8258-1858-6 (p. 217)
- ↑ Official English language website of the Ethiopian House of Representatives ( Memento from September 26, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ Aregawi Berhe, A Political history of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (1975-1991) (Los Angeles: Tsehai, 2009), 331