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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Military Rule in Ethiopia (1974-1987): The Balance Sheet |
Author: | Tekle, Amare |
Year: | 1990 |
Periodical: | Horn of Africa |
Volume: | 13 |
Issue: | 3-4; 14 #1-2 |
Period: | July-December |
Pages: | 38-58 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Ethiopia |
Subjects: | military regimes Politics and Government Military, Defense and Arms |
Abstract: | After the overthrow of a moribund imperial system in 1974, the Provisional Military Administrative Council (PMAC) assumed its rule over Ethiopia with the aim of creating a new egalitarian society, eradicating poverty, and lifting the country from its backwardness. It was assumed that such a revolutionary transformation would change the Ethiopian State from an instrument of oppression to one of liberation. This was to prove a false hope. This paper demonstrates that the PMAC alienated the population because it ceased to be faithful to the basic values and principles of the ideology it had espoused. As a result, it turned the State once again into an instrument of oppression and exploitation. Second, it shows that the policies of the new regime accelerated the process of State destruction, national disintegration and institutional decay which had already assumed alarming proportions during the previous regime. The PMAC lost peasant support when it tried to organize the peasantry into cooperatives and new villagization and resettlement projects, with disastrous consequences for the Ethiopian economy. Furthermore, the new political environment and the dislocation in the economic sector had a negative impact on the social and service sectors of the economy, such as education. The people reacted in three ways: they joined the myriad political movements that presently exist in the country; they became refugees; they remained behind, relying on existing traditional institutions of society. Notes, ref. |