T.P.L.F. then and now. A short take.

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Paulos Yrgaw
Feb 19, 2006

As we celebrate the golden birth of T.P.L.F, we can not help it but reflect on its legacy, accomplishments and challenges. A Cold War era saying had it that, "If you are not a Communist at age twenty, you don’t have a heart, and if you are not a Capitalist at age forty, you don’t have the brains." It would not be a hyperbole to relate the anecdote with the story of T.P.L.F. If we are to reduce the abstraction of T.P.L.F to an anthropic level, it would be a healthy metamorphosis where any young person goes through the realm of idealism in his/her formative years and with the drift of time becomes pragmatist when the exigency of events becomes real.

I ask to be forgiven. The intention is not to put the noble cause of T.P.L.F and its colossal accomplishment into a vertigo effect, rather it is to appreciate its dramatic take off from uncompromising "Hoxian-mania" to "Hayekian-mania" when other guerilla-oriented Fronts get frozen in time. If Julies Caesar had said, "We have to help luck (fortune) in order fortune to be on our side", equally T.P.L.F has been lucky but the luck didn’t come like a drizzle from the heavens, it was helped, invigorated, and systematized by the "P" in T.P.L.F.

Luck in this sense, is not of course the freak of events as we invariably experience it in our daily lives, luck in a larger scale, in political events is more about grasping events in their ripe forms and recognising the power of now where one does not step into the same river twice. The ingenuity to that effect was brilliantly captured when T.P.L.F in its nascent years cleaned up the mess in its yards specifically in Western and Eastern Tigrai first before going for the bigger fish to fry. The Colonel.

As a wise man once said it, strategy and tactics are like the Chinese chop-sticks, when one steps forward, the other glides backwards but in a firm position, equally when the tactics was forging alliances as a means to a grander end, the strategy may have glided or glitched at some point but the end result was never blurred, it has always been the interest of the people at best.

Perhaps the cardinal success of T.P.L.F is magnificently described by John Young in his book, "Peasant Revolution in Ethiopia" when he said, T.P.L.F managed to win the hearts and minds of the peasantry by understanding the psychology of the peasants in general and by living exactly like them in particular. His keen observation is narrated in contrast with the other Fronts such as the E.P.R.P and E.D.U who patronized and at times showed contempt toward the peasantry whom they supposedly set out to liberate from oppression.

Incidently, it is rather safe to argue that, the apparent indifference of the urbanites toward the T.P.L.F can be comprehended with in this political reality where the core base of T.P.L.F is described as a Front of the peasantry. In conjuncture with this, the recent sway of residents of Addis away from the T.P.L.F can be understood with out any entangled political assessments.

Having said that, however, the fact that the Ethiopian populace is the summation of agrarian sector in its wider spectrum, the attempt and eventual success of the T.P.L.F by reaching out to the grass-roots has been a brilliant tactical move and a win battle in strategy as well. As the "F" in T.P.L.F becomes defunct and a relic of the past, as the organization is melted down in an umbrella organization, the vestiges of the communist era such as "Polit Bureau and Central Committee" are still functionary organs to give a structure and administrative tools to the nation in a grander scale.

The challenge is however, at least in a theoretical take, as the leadership is gravitated towards free market economy with a penchant of liberal democracy, how is it to be compromised the relics of Communism (Polit Bureau and Central Committee) semantics with the language of a Capitalist hue. Apparently for some, it is not only an apparatus for administrative purposes, it also fosters a sense of belonging to the basics of the struggle and a privilege as well.

As the leadership strives to reform the movement in a Capitalist stint, the challenge with in the Front will be harder. Simply because, the vestiges of Communism and the tenets of liberal democracy are not complementary. They are mutually exclusive. Either has to go. As the new generation emerges with a nationalist zeal and with an ambitious political proclivity, their choice of leading the country will depend on the success of the leadership in Office.

The choice that has been taken to lead the country into a democratic path with a streak of open market economy is unequivocal. There is no an alternative to it. The world as we know it is becoming more a global village and living in isolation in order to remain true to the very structure and foundation of the Front is not a wise thing to do.

As Winston Churchill put it, the wind of change which was blowing across Africa in the 60s and 70s carried with it, a Marxist bent. It was a very effective intellectual tool in mobilizing the oppressed against tyranny and all the "isms" of that era, however, the need for Marxism is an obsolete and a relic of the past. As they say, Fronts are organic, they grow, evolve by breathing the pneumo of the ever changing greater political world. That is the wisdom of a rare commodity and that is the genius of T.P.L.F as well.

Comments: asimov107@yahoo.ca

Paulos Yrgaw
Ottawa, Canada.

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