Tigrayan People's Liberation Front
The People's Liberation Front of Tigray ( Tigrinya: ሕዝባዊ ወያኔ ሓርነት ትግራይ, ḥizbāwī weyānē ḥārinet Tigray, English Tigray People's Liberation Front, abbreviation TPLF in Ethiopia better known by the acronym Woyane ) is a former Marxist- Leninist liberation movement and current party in Ethiopia's Tigray region.
The Party is the dominant force in the ruling coalition in Ethiopia Ethiopian People Revolutionary Democratic Front ( EPRDF ). So is or was, inter alia, the Ethiopian Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin and 2012 deceased former Prime Minister Meles Zenawi - which simultaneously also chairman of the party was - a member of the TPLF. In addition, the Tigray People's Liberation Front, the regional government in the Ethiopian region of Tigray.
The Tigray People's Liberation Front has approximately 500,000 party members. In the parliamentary elections in May 2005, the party received a total of 38 of the possible 546 seats, of which 24 men and 14 were women.
The former military wing of the People's Liberation Front Tigray was the People's Liberation Army of Tigray.
Ideology
Today, the People's Liberation Front of Tigray is formally democratic- socialist and committed to the self-determination of the Tigray ethnic group. The People's Liberation Front of Tigray is dominated by the former experience, that she was quite put as a guerrilla organization fighting the communist Derg government under the Workers' Party of Ethiopia, which was under the leadership of Colonel Mengistu since 1970 on its own.
In the 1970s, the People's Liberation Front of Tigray followed an Albanian embossed communism as a guiding ideology, however, developed from the late 1980s, a new ideology, which is composed of state control, capitalism and democratic elements, at the same time since around 1985 socialist goals in politics organization continually pushed aside. The TPLF also argued for an anti-imperialist and anti-feudal democratic revolution against the Amharic centralism and for the self-determination of Eritrea.
History
The People's Liberation Front of Tigray in 1975 by younger intellectuals from the Tigraynischen University Students Association ( TUSA ) was founded as the successor to the 1974 incurred Tigraynischen National Organization ( TNO) who were dissatisfied with the promo -monarchist price of the established opposition in the province of Tigray and under the influence liberation Front of the Eritrean people ( EPLF ) were. The TPLF stood since its foundation in opposition to the Derg under Mengistu and initially saw itself as a Marxist- Leninist movement that used in the 1970 's and 1980's close relationship with the Party of Labour of Albania and in smaller sizes also the KPD / ML in the FRG.
In alliance with the EPLF succeeded the armed units of the TPLF, in the late 1970s against the royalist - conservative forces to Ras Mengesha ( Ethiopian Democratic Union), the nationalist Tigray Liberation Front and against the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party ( IHAPA ) militarily dominant enforce strength of the opposition in Tigray and - to control areas from 1980 - according to some military setbacks by the Derg regime. The TPLF started there set up an administration, a carry (even by opponents as a relatively successful recognized ) agrarian reform and to take important steps towards equality of women and Muslims in a previously Christian- dominated patriarchal society. The rebel organization itself also managed to survive the famine and the measures introduced by the government forced relocations in the years 1984/85. You, however, failed, over and above the related welfare society of Tigray ( Relief Society of Tigray, REST) to distribute relief supplies. The TPLF is said to have illegally misappropriated aid for weapons and the establishment of a Marxist party. Only 95 % of the posted auxiliary funds were used for arms purchases.
As of early 1989, the TPLF Tigray controlled completely and joined with the Democratic Movement of the Ethiopian People ( Ethiopian People's Democratic Movement, EPDM ) and the Democratic People's Organization of Oromo for the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front together, at times existed within the TPLF with the Marxist-Leninist League of Tigray ( MALELIT ) a parallel structure, the aim was to build a cadre party.