Ethiopia’s National Dialogue: A Crisis of Legitimacy or a Pathway to Peace?

By E Frashie Ethiopian Tribune columnist

ADDIS ABABA—Last week, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed addressed the nation with what government officials framed as a milestone announcement: the National Dialogue Commission has nearly completed its agenda-gathering phase, a process spanning over 300 districts and engaging thousands of Ethiopians. Yet within the same breath, the Prime Minister made a striking claim that encapsulates the deep polarisation surrounding this initiative. He alleged that Ethiopian opposition to the commission’s recent London consultation included not only domestic critics but also Eritreans, though he provided no validated intelligence to substantiate this assertion.

The London event itself became a theatre of Ethiopia’s broader contradictions. Ambassador Mehmud Drir, the commission’s representative, found himself in the unusual position of serving as translator for an Oromo security firm participant who thanked him for facilitating venue security. Government opponents have since characterised the gathering as “a national dialogue under siege by Oromo extremists,” praising participants who “remained defiant” despite alleged threats. Yet critics point to a different narrative: that participants used the platform to oppose the ongoing conflict in Amhara, exposing what they see as the commission’s fundamental partiality rather than its neutrality dialogue under siege.

These competing accounts of a single event heroic perseverance versus manufactured victimhood, genuine grassroots participation versus orchestrated government theatre, illustrate why Ethiopia’s National Dialogue Commission finds itself trapped in a paradox that mirrors the country’s broader crisis: everyone agrees dialogue is necessary, yet hardly anyone believes the current process can deliver it.

The commission’s predicament is not merely bureaucratic. It represents a fundamental question about political transformation in deeply divided societies: can conversation precede peace, or must peace precede conversation? As Ethiopia’s conflicts continue to smoulder in Tigray, Oromia, and Amhara, this question has moved from philosophical abstraction to urgent political reality, with consequences that will reverberate far beyond the Horn of Africa.

This debate reached a critical juncture recently through two contrasting public forums that reveal not merely disagreement over tactics but fundamentally opposed understandings of Ethiopia’s crisis. At Chatham House in London, a session distinct from the government-organised diaspora consultation, leading analysts delivered withering critiques of the commission’s fundamental structure and timing. Meanwhile, on Ethiopian state television EBC, government officials and academic supporters presented a more optimistic assessment of progress and potential.

The EBC broadcast featured Ambassador Mehmud Drir alongside Dr Roba Petros, a peace and development studies researcher, Emeritus Professor Alemayehu Gebremariam, a political science scholar and legal counsel, and Dr Teshale Tegene, a communication and public relations lecturer. The discussion provided detailed insight into the dialogue process, its philosophical foundations, and the practical challenges of implementation. Dr Teshale, notably, raised concerns about quality control of collected agendas and the difficulty of overcoming entrenched historical narratives of oppressor and oppressed, beneficiary and victim. The panel’s focus on “how” to conduct the dialogue, the role of citizens, intellectuals, and media, reflected a premise that the process itself is fundamentally sound, requiring only better implementation.

Yet this official optimism crashes against a wall of analytical scepticism articulated most forcefully at the separate Chatham House discussion titled “How to Craft a Credible and Inclusive Implementation Process for the National Dialogue in Ethiopia.” The contrast in framing is itself revealing: where EBC’s discussion presumed credibility and explored implementation, Chatham House questioned whether credibility exists at all and what preconditions might create it.

Mastewal Taddese Terefe, a lawyer and researcher based in New York City, brought formidable credentials and practical experience to her critique. A graduate of New York University School of Law with a Master of Public Policy from Oxford, she served as a legal fellow at the Federal Attorney General’s Office in Addis Ababa from 2018 to 2019, directly supporting the Ethiopian government’s justice reform efforts. Her subsequent work providing legal and policy analyses for organisations including the International Development Law Organization and the World Bank Group gave her comparative perspective on governance reform across multiple contexts. This background, including direct experience working within Ethiopian government institutions, lends particular weight to her assessment that the National Dialogue Commission currently holds “a definite no” for meaningful promise.

Mastewal’s critique focuses on what she characterises as the commission’s original sin: its exclusionary formation. Established by a parliament where the ruling Prosperity Party commands over 96 per cent of seats, with commissioners vetted and approved by this same legislature, the structure creates what she terms a “weaponised institution” one designed to provide democratic legitimacy whilst maintaining regime control. The pattern, she argues, is depressingly familiar across authoritarian contexts: announce a grand initiative with democratic rhetoric, staff it with individuals who pose no threat to power, allow it to address peripheral concerns whilst avoiding core questions of authority, then cite its existence as evidence of reform when facing international pressure. Ethiopia’s history offers ample precedent, from the Derg’s controlled mass organisations to the EPRDF’s carefully managed civil society space.

Her prescription differs markedly from calls for outright postponement. Instead, she presents the commission with an ultimatum: transform itself through dramatic internal reform or accept irrelevance. Her four non-negotiable preconditions, guarantee nationwide ceasefire, end humanitarian blockades, include all armed groups even those designated as terrorists, and establish genuine independence from executive control should not be topics for future discussion but immediate demands the commission itself champions. This approach embodies what might be called transformative institutionalism: the belief that institutions can earn legitimacy through courageous action rather than formal legal status. If the commission publicly demanded these preconditions, challenging the very government that created it, this would constitute proof of independence more convincing than any constitutional provision. The courage to bite the hand that feeds becomes the foundation for credibility amongst those currently boycotting.

Dr Goitom Gebreluel offers perhaps the most withering assessment at the same Chatham House forum. Ethiopia, he argues, suffers from what he terms “first-order problems” active insurgencies, compromised territorial control, mass displacement, and what credible reports describe as ethnic cleansing. These are not policy disagreements amenable to deliberation but existential challenges to the state’s basic functions. “The core demands of the opposition are power sharing and security guarantees,” Dr Goitom states bluntly. “The current dialogue, limited to discussions, is ill-equipped to meet these demands.”

His prescription is stark: postpone the entire exercise and replace it with third-party mediation focused on establishing the security preconditions:- ceasefires, humanitarian access, political prisoner releases that would make genuine dialogue possible. The current approach, he warns, wastes scarce political capital whilst deepening the very cynicism it seeks to overcome. Each failed consultation, each boycott by major opposition groups, each continuation of violence during the dialogue process reinforces the perception that peaceful political transformation is impossible, making future reconciliation efforts exponentially more difficult.

This analysis finds resonance in the recent history of peace processes. Northern Ireland’s Good Friday Agreement succeeded only after decades of preparatory work establishing basic security arrangements and building trust through incremental confidence-building measures. South Africa’s negotiated transition required external facilitation and explicit security guarantees that protected all parties from the consequences of their participation. The precedents suggest that rushing to comprehensive dialogue whilst armed groups still control territory and civilians still face violence may be not merely premature but actively counterproductive.

The divergence between the Chatham House analytical session and both the EBC discussion and the government-organised London diaspora consultation is instructive. The EBC panel, whilst including academic critique from Dr Teshale regarding historical narratives and media responsibility, operated within parameters that presumed the dialogue’s fundamental legitimacy. Questions focused on optimising implementation rather than interrogating foundational premises. The absence of organised political opposition voices or civil society representatives known for opposing the current framing meant the discussion remained, as one analysis noted, focused on “how” rather than “if” how to conduct the dialogue successfully rather than whether the commission as constituted can succeed at all.

Similarly, the London diaspora event, where Ambassador Mehmud reportedly congratulated the a-fan Oromo speaker who facilitated security personnel for the venue and translated that for participants, appears to have attracted primarily government supporters or at least those willing to engage within the commission’s framework. The Prime Minister’s characterisation of opposition as including Eritreans, whilst unsubstantiated, suggests an attempt to delegitimise domestic critics by associating them with foreign interference. Yet the fact that participants felt compelled to express grievances about the Amhara conflict even within this controlled setting hints at the depth of dissatisfaction that even sympathetic audiences harbour.

This reflects broader patterns in Ethiopian state media, which has historically shown bias towards federal government narratives. Whilst the EBC panel was not simply promotional acknowledging challenges in agenda quality control and the difficulty of bridging deep historical divisions, it lacked the voices that could offer fundamental challenge to the process itself. Major opposition groups including the Oromo Liberation Front and Oromo Federalist Congress refuse participation, labelling the commission a “government project.” Their perspective, essential for truly balanced assessment, was absent from both the state television discussion and the London diaspora consultation.

The Chatham House forum, by contrast, centred precisely these critical perspectives. Both Mastewal and Dr Goitom operated from the premise that the commission’s current structure and political context render it incapable of achieving stated objectives. Their debate concerned not whether the process is flawed but what remedies might salvage it postponement for external mediation versus radical internal transformation. This represents a fundamentally different conversation, one that questions legitimacy rather than presuming it.

The official response emphasises context and complexity. No peace process begins with perfect conditions, proponents argue. Northern Ireland’s dialogue occurred alongside continuing violence. Colombia’s peace talks with FARC proceeded whilst armed conflict continued. The act of dialogue itself creates constituencies for peace, gradually shifting incentives away from violence even when security remains imperfect. Waiting for ideal conditions means waiting forever, allowing conflicts to deepen and grievances to multiply. From this perspective, the critics demand an impossible standard whilst offering no realistic pathway to achieve it, external mediators cannot materialise overnight, and opposition groups might use any postponement simply to consolidate military positions.

There is genuine force to this counter-argument. Ethiopia’s conflicts are not frozen, awaiting resolution at some optimal future moment. They are active, escalating, generating new atrocities and grievances daily. The humanitarian toll grows whilst political actors debate procedural questions. The Prime Minister’s announcement that agenda-gathering nears completion represents, from the government’s perspective, tangible progress despite extraordinary obstacles. Hundreds of civil society organisations, religious institutions, and community groups are engaging with the current process despite its imperfections, and their courage deserves recognition rather than dismissal as regime collaboration.

Yet acknowledging the costs of delay does not negate the critics’ core insight: legitimacy matters, and legitimacy cannot be proclaimed into existence. When the Oromo Liberation Front, Oromo Federalist Congress, and numerous smaller parties refuse participation, they are not merely being obstructionist. They are responding rationally to an institution whose structural dependence on the ruling party makes genuine independence implausible. When armed groups designated as terrorists are excluded whilst the government claims inclusive dialogue, this is not peripheral detail but fundamental contradiction. When participants at a government-organised event feel compelled to express grievances about ongoing conflict in Amhara described by supporters as defiance under siege, by critics as exposure of the commission’s partiality, it suggests the process has not created the safe political space necessary for honest conversation.

The international community’s role in this debate remains contested but consequential. Western governments and multilateral organisations have generally adopted cautious endorsement welcoming the dialogue, encouraging broader participation, providing financial support whilst avoiding direct criticism of structural flaws. This diplomatic approach is understandable but potentially complicit. By treating the commission as legitimate regardless of its performance on inclusivity and independence, external actors may inadvertently enable precisely the “weaponised institution” dynamic that Mastewal identifies. The provision of resources and diplomatic validation without clear conditionality tied to measurable progress on preconditions reduces incentives for genuine reform.

A more constructive international engagement might involve honest brokerage that acknowledges failures alongside successes, graduated support calibrated to progress on specific benchmarks, ceasefire verification, humanitarian access improvements, opposition participation, and readiness to facilitate external mediation if domestic processes prove inadequate. The uncomfortable truth is that sustained international pressure, whilst resented as interference, has historically been essential to successful transitions in comparable contexts. South Africa’s negotiations occurred under sustained external scrutiny. Colombia’s peace process received crucial support and verification from international observers. The fiction that purely domestic processes operating without external accountability can succeed in deeply polarised contexts has little empirical support.

Perhaps the deepest wisdom lies in recognising that all parties to this debate are partially correct. The government officials and academic supporters on EBC are right that Ethiopia cannot afford indefinite postponement whilst conflicts escalate, and that dialogue processes can themselves create momentum for peace. Dr Roba Petros and Professor Alemayehu’s contributions highlighted comparative examples and philosophical foundations that demonstrate serious intellectual engagement with the dialogue’s potential. The participants in London who braved alleged threats to engage with the process deserve acknowledgement for their courage, whatever one thinks of the commission’s structure.

Yet the critics at Chatham House are equally right that current conditions make genuine dialogue nearly impossible and that structural flaws in the commission’s formation undermine its credibility. Mastewal’s insider experience working within Ethiopian government institutions gives particular credibility to her assessment of how institutions can be weaponised whilst maintaining democratic appearances. Dr Goitom is right that attempting comprehensive dialogue before establishing minimal security wastes political capital and deepens cynicism. The fact that even government-supportive participants at the London event felt compelled to express grievances about ongoing conflict suggests the process has not yet created conditions for the open, honest conversation its architects envisioned.

The synthesis of these partial truths requires precisely the political humility and willingness to embrace complexity that authoritarian politics systematically eliminates. What Ethiopia requires is neither blind faith in process nor counsel of perfection on preconditions, but something more difficult: conditional proceeding. The commission must continue whilst simultaneously transforming its mission from consultation facilitator to precondition champion, using its platform to demand ceasefires, humanitarian access, and inclusive participation. The government must demonstrate political will through concrete actions, prisoner releases, ceasefire orders, media openings that allow critical voices equal platform alongside supportive ones, not merely rhetorical commitments or unsubstantiated allegations about foreign interference.

Opposition groups must reciprocate good faith reforms with genuine engagement rather than indefinitely moving goalposts. But the burden of proof lies primarily with the commission and the government that created it. The Prime Minister’s unsubstantiated claim about Eritrean involvement in London opposition, rather than strengthening the commission’s position, reinforces critics’ concerns about a government more interested in delegitimising dissent than addressing its root causes. Ambassador Mehmud’s dual role as commission representative and security facilitator at diaspora events, whilst perhaps practically necessary, symbolises the uncomfortable reality that a process claiming national inclusivity requires security arrangements to protect participants from fellow Ethiopians.

The stakes extend far beyond Ethiopia. In an era when authoritarianism resurges globally and many nations face challenges of managing diversity, Ethiopia’s experience will influence regional and global debates about conflict resolution and democratic development in multi-ethnic contexts. If Ethiopia succeeds in negotiating peaceful transformation through inclusive dialogue, it provides a model for other divided societies. If it fails, if violence continues, the state fragments, or authoritarian consolidation proceeds under democratic pretence, the lesson drawn will be that force, not dialogue, determines outcomes in contexts of profound division.

The commission, having nearly completed its agenda-gathering phase according to the Prime Minister, now faces its moment of truth. Will it proceed to drafting recommendations based on consultations conducted primarily amongst government supporters and civil society willing to work within existing parameters? Or will it heed the calls from Mastewal and others to pause, confront its legitimacy deficit, and champion the preconditions necessary for genuinely inclusive dialogue? The gap between the EBC panel’s focus on implementation and the Chatham House forum’s questioning of legitimacy, between the London diaspora event’s managed participation and the broader opposition’s boycott, represents not merely different tactical assessments but incompatible visions of what constitutes legitimate political process in a fractured state.

The nation watches, caught between the cautious optimism of state media and the structural pessimism of external critics, wondering whether this pursuit of consensus will ultimately bridge divisions or deepen them. The answer will depend less on the elegance of constitutional amendments or policy documents than on whether Ethiopia’s political leaders can summon the courage to embrace uncertainty, accept compromise, and prioritise national survival over factional advantage. Whether that possibility remains alive depends on choices being made, or deferred, in Addis Ababa today, and on whether allegations of foreign interference, claims of dialogue under siege, and managed consultations can somehow transform into the genuine national conversation Ethiopia desperately needs before its conflicts render all dialogue impossible.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Ethiopian Tribune or its editorial board.