When Liberty Is Misused: Rethinking Tigray’s Democratic Path

A fractured discourse risks undoing Tigray’s fragile post-war democratic hopes.

The war in Tigray may have fallen silent, but its political arena has grown louder and more corrosive. In the years since the guns were laid down, a new battleground has emerged, not against Ethiopia, Eritrea, or famine, but among Tigrayans themselves.

Party officials, self-proclaimed reformists, and opposition figures occupy radio panels and social media feeds, not to forge unity or articulate strategies for displaced millions, but to dismantle one another through rumor, derision, and ridicule.

James Madison’s caution rings with new relevance: “Liberty may be endangered by the abuses of liberty as well as the abuses of power.” Today in Tigray, it is not state repression that is most visibly compromising democracy, but a reckless hostility licensed under the banner of democratic freedom.

At the heart of any democratic system lies the disciplined use of liberty. Freedom of speech and assembly do not confer the right to defame, intimidate, or degrade political competitors. International norms recognize this distinction.

While the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights enshrines expressive freedoms, Articles 19 and 20 make clear these freedoms are subject to limits where they threaten the rights of others or undermine public order.

Democratic life functions only when freedoms are used with care. It requires a willingness to speak openly while also exercising restraint, maintaining civic discipline, and taking opposing voices seriously.

Where freedoms are used to destroy trust, incite hostility, or delegitimize rivals, they cease to serve democratic purpose and instead become instruments of sabotage.

Nowhere is this more urgent than Tigray.

Existential Stakes

Post-war Tigray stands on precarious ground. A third of its territory is under occupation. More than a million displaced people remain in camps or temporary schoolrooms, facing deprivation that borders on the inhumane.

Cities still bear the imprint of siege warfare; rural districts remain gutted by the destruction of infrastructure and livelihood. The possibility of renewed conflict looms over the region, and its military recovery remains tightly constrained by political ambiguities and external pressures.

Under such conditions, the establishment of a functional democratic system is not a luxury, it is a necessity for survival.

Tigray finds itself in emergent crises. It requires consensus on priorities: securing peace, negotiating territorial reintegration, returning IDPs, coordinating humanitarian recovery, and rebuilding the war torn economy.

Instead, the political energy that should be directed toward these existential challenges is absorbed by infighting and factional battles engineered through public shaming, personal disparagement, and strategic divisiveness.

Double Standards

For decades, the TPLF was criticized for its highly centralized governance, intolerance of internal dissent, and tightly controlled, opaque structures.

Opposition actors in Tigray’s politics—particularly those who rose to prominence after the war—built their platforms by denouncing and accusing the TPLF of a political culture hostile to pluralism.

They argue that the TPLF often portrays those with differing viewpoints as enemies or banda (gu’gile til’met) to be sidelined, rather than as partners in debate.

That critique remains valid. Yet the glaring contradiction is that those who condemn the TPLF for lacking democratic culture are often seen engaging in the same undemocratic behavior. They denounce character assassination yet practice it.

In recent political forums, opposition actors frequently resort to outright vilification, casting the TPLF as an enemy undeserving of political existence.

This rhetoric goes beyond simple criticism; it effectively exposes them as undemocratic, as such a mentality mirrors the very behavior they claim to reject in the TPLF and ultimately corrodes the essence of democracy.

They employ language intended not to persuade, but to humiliate. In Tigrinya, women supporting the TPLF are belittled as “lim’at gugile”, a sneering shorthand likening them to derivative mobilization tools.

Even members with advanced degrees backing the party are undermined as uneducated, their expertise waved away to sustain narratives of backwardness. Senior TPLF figures and grassroots activists are collectively labeled “gugilede’hret”, connoting a cadre of primitive thinkers.

The criticisms directed at the TPLF are not fringe outbursts. They are recurring features in major opposition dialogues, local political gatherings, and influential social media accounts.

What might appear as hyperbole or political jest is, in context, a systematic campaign of character invalidation designed to undermine not arguments, but the very competence and legitimacy of entire constituencies.

This is not the practice of democratic debate. It is the mirroring of authoritarian tactics, weaponizing liberal freedoms to silence dissent rather than suppressing dissent through force.

If the TPLF’s character assassination and power centralization obstructed pluralistic discourse, the opposition’s behavior now does so in new ways. Their approach narrows democratic space not by closing institutional access, but by undermining the culture necessary for open engagement.

Their conduct converts platforms meant for policy exchange into arenas of public derision. In this environment, rational debate is not simply discouraged, it is displaced.

Strategic Void

Political culture shapes political outcomes. When contempt becomes the dominant mode of discourse, public trust erodes, and strategic thinking collapses.

Parties invested in personal destruction become incapable of building coalitions or negotiating compromise, both essential for governing in times of crisis.

In Tigray, this dynamic has created a policy vacuum. Rather than presenting concrete alternatives on security, governance reform, economic recovery, or the status of internally displaced populations, political discussion revolves heavily around delegitimizing the TPLF.

The region’s most pressing concerns—territorial reintegration, institutional rehabilitation, the design of post-conflict security structures—receive comparatively little sustained attention.

Some actors openly assert that Tigray’s future depends first on defeating the TPLF politically or humiliating it beyond recovery, even as the region’s external adversaries maintain considerable leverage.

This intransigence is rooted in a deeper pathology: a fundamental lack of appetite for the gradual, often grueling work of building a democratic culture from the ground up.

For many opposition actors, participation seems conditional on being granted co-ownership from the outset, a position their relatively short history, limited constituency, and electoral performance cannot merit.

Rather than embracing the vital role of a constructive underdog—scrutinizing, proposing alternatives, and building public trust over successive electoral cycles—they resort to disparaging any arrangement in which they are not dominant. Their campaign of delegitimization is, in effect, a tool to undermine any system they do not immediately control.

The lessons from established democracies are instructive. The British Labour Party and the German CDU/CSU both spent years in the political wilderness after major defeats, using that time to rebuild policy platforms, cultivate new leaders, and demonstrate their competence at local and regional levels.

They understood that earning a governing mandate is a marathon, not a sprint, especially when facing veteran parties that once monopolized the political space. This patient, incremental work is the bedrock of a resilient democracy.

In Tigray’s fragile context, this impatience is not just counter-productive; it is catastrophic. The opposition’s disruptive tactics risk dragging the region’s politics into a deeper, more prolonged crisis from which recovery will be exponentially harder.

A cautionary tale lies in Ethiopia’s own recent history: in 2005, the opposition Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD), despite winning an unprecedented number of parliamentary seats, chose to forfeit them and resort to extra-parliamentary sabotage rather than occupy the platform it had earned.

This fateful decision to reject a hard-won foothold contributed directly to the reversal of Ethiopia’s democratic opening, creating a vacuum that was filled by the increasingly authoritarian and centralized one-man show that governs today.

Tigray now stands at a similar precipice. Following the war, during the formation of the Tigray Interim Regional Administration (TIRA), key opposition groups rejected the seats they were offered, not because they were denied a voice, but because their representation was not equal to that of the TPLF.

This demand for parity willfully ignored their dismal performance in the 2020 Tigray elections—widely considered the most democratic in the region’s history—where they failed to win more than a handful of seats.

By prioritizing symbolic power over substantive engagement, they are leading Tigray down the same path of squandered opportunity that proved so devastating for Ethiopia as a whole. The choice is stark: Learn from the CUD’s historic failure or condemn Tigray to repeat it, with consequences even more grave given the region’s precarious state.

It is a dangerous contradiction. Those advocating democratic renewal are preparing for it by dismantling rather than cultivating the political culture required to sustain it. In doing so, they risk destabilizing the very process they claim to defend.

Measured Liberty

Democracy is not born from agreement, it is built on the capacity to navigate disagreement responsibly. That requires the courage to coexist with competing visions. It demands persuasion over degradation, critique over caricature, opposition without dehumanization.

Madison’s warning is acute precisely because liberty, when misused, generates the conditions that justify stronger political control.

If Tigray’s parties continue to substitute insult for argument and rivalry for policy, they may inadvertently sustain the very centralization and intolerance they claim to resist.

A party that mocks citizens for their political affiliation does not champion democratic freedom; it practices exclusion. One that reduces political competition to character annihilation does not widen democratic space; it constricts it.

A movement that equates dissent with backwardness replicates the logic of authoritarianism regardless of its rhetoric or intentions.

In Tigray’s fragile post-war milieu, where institutions are weak and tensions remain volatile, responsible political behavior is not optional. It is decisive.

Corrective Shift

Reversing the current trend requires an immediate shift in political culture and communication practices. The following actions are both urgent and feasible:

First, political parties must commit publicly to renouncing character assassination and personal derogation in all forms, including through party media channels and affiliated social platforms.

This pledge should explicitly encompass the derogatory labels now in common circulation. Political critique must target policies and decisions, not identities, education credentials, or gender.

Second, political forums, debates, and broadcast platforms should pivot to structured policy discussions.

Moderators and conveners must enforce content rules that prioritize matters of regional recovery: the fate of IDPs, territorial reintegration, economic reconstruction, institutional rebuilding, and strategies for peace and security. Emotional accusations and personal attacks should be ruled inadmissible.

Third, civil society organizations and media outlets must take responsibility for shaping discourse. They should offer platforms calibrated to promote comparative policy analysis and hold actors accountable for responsible communication. Rather than amplifying combative rhetoric, they must enforce standards that foster constructive dialogue.

Fourth, party leaders and senior personalities must model the cultural transition they advocate. This includes engaging openly with ideological opponents on substantive topics, even where disagreement is strong.

Democratic maturity is tested most in moments of political anxiety. If leaders cannot coexist with divergent views in peacetime, they will struggle to manage dissent in governance.

Fifth, opposition parties must recalibrate their strategy from one of immediate conquest to one of long-term construction.

This means accepting and robustly fulfilling the role of a parliamentary or extra-parliamentary opposition: offering detailed policy alternatives, building grassroots support through service and advocacy, and demonstrating governance competence at all available levels.

Democratic legitimacy is earned through persistent, responsible engagement, not bestowed through disruptive demands.

Last Margin

Tigray’s democratic experiment stands at a defining moment. Tigray cannot afford to lose its political energy to internal antagonisms while its future remains uncertain and its people face ongoing humanitarian and territorial crises.

Political actors must recognize that liberty in post-conflict societies is not strengthened through unfettered expression, but through disciplined expression. The rein is not antithetical to democracy, its absence is.

The alternative is clear and perilous: a politics of perpetual fracture, devoid of trust, short on policy, and exposed to external destabilization. Tigray cannot build a durable democratic future on the erosion of mutual respect. It must begin instead with restraint, clarity of intent, and re-commitment to political dignity.

Democracy will not take root by eliminating rivals, but by learning to govern alongside them.

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While this commentary contains the author’s opinions, Ethiopia Insight will correct factual errors.

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