Constitutional reform could challenge decades-old assumptions about Ethiopia’s political order
For generations, Amhara political thought rested on an implicit premise: Whatever ideological language successive governments adopted, the Ethiopian state remained familiar political territory. Regimes changed, but Amhara politics continued to see itself as closely tied to the country’s governing center. Today, that assumption is being tested as never before.
The constitutional reforms reportedly being prepared through Ethiopia’s National Dialogue Conference could mark the completion of a historic transition already underway: the relocation of Amhara politics from the center of the Ethiopian state to its periphery.
Many within the Amhara political establishment have yet to fully confront the implications.
Critics of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) often portray the coalition as little more than a vehicle for Tigrayan domination. There is truth in the observation that the TPLF exercised disproportionate influence through its control of the military, intelligence services, and security apparatus. Yet this should not obscure another important institutional reality.
Structurally, the EPRDF rested on four constituent parties: the TPLF, the ANDM, the OPDO, and the SEPDM. Each enjoyed equal representation within the coalition’s highest executive bodies, regardless of the population size of the constituencies they represented.
That arrangement proved decisive in 2018, when the OPDO and ANDM combined to outvote the TPLF and propel Abiy Ahmed to the premiership. Such a realignment would have been impossible had the coalition functioned solely as an instrument of TPLF rule.
The episode demonstrated that while the TPLF possessed enormous informal influence, the coalition itself did not structurally privilege one ethnic constituency over the others.
That equilibrium has since disappeared.
The Prosperity Party replaced the coalition model with a single national party. Although presented as a move beyond ethnic politics, it introduced a different organizing principle: demographic majoritarianism.
Rather than equal constituent parties negotiating power, influence under the new arrangement increasingly reflects the numerical weight of Ethiopia’s population.
Official Prosperity Party figures illustrate this political logic. Of the party’s 45-member Executive Committee, 10 seats (22.2%) are held by Oromo officials, eight (17.8%) by Amhara, and four (8.9%) by Somali representatives, with the remaining positions distributed among other regional constituencies.
The party’s bylaws formalize this principle. They stipulate that representation in the General Assembly, Central Committee, Executive Committee, and party branch structures should be determined by the population size of each region and the number of party members it contributes. In other words, demographic weight is not merely reflected in leadership composition; it is embedded in the rules governing representation.
As Ethiopia’s largest ethnolinguistic group, the Oromo naturally command greater representation throughout the party hierarchy. Amhara leaders occupy an important but secondary position, followed by other constituencies according to demographic size.
This represents a profound institutional shift.
Power is no longer distributed through negotiated parity among founding parties but through electoral and demographic arithmetic.
For many Amhara elites, this was precisely the outcome they did not anticipate when they helped engineer Abiy Ahmed’s rise.
The ANDM—later renamed the Amhara Democratic Party—entered its alliance with the OPDO to eventually form the Prosperity Party believing both shared an interest in dismantling TPLF dominance.
Many within Amhara politics envisioned an “OroMara” partnership that would either govern Ethiopia jointly or eventually restore a more centralized Ethiopian state in which Amhara political influence would once again correspond to its historical role in state formation.
Instead, the alliance produced something quite different.
Rather than correcting the TPLF’s extra-institutional dominance while preserving institutional parity, the new arrangement abandoned parity altogether in favor of demographic hierarchy.
From this perspective, Amhara politics exchanged the status of an equal institutional partner for that of a permanently junior partner within a political order increasingly shaped by Oromo demographic advantage.
Whether this outcome was intentional or an unintended consequence of institutional redesign is almost beside the point. Nor should the increased representation of Oromo officials within the party hierarchy be interpreted as equivalent to greater political empowerment of the Oromo public.
The Prosperity Party’s record shows that officials, regardless of ethnicity or regional origin, have generally operated within a centralized political structure rather than as direct representatives of their constituencies. Nevertheless, the broader implications of the new institutional order remain difficult to ignore.
Reports suggest that the government intends to use the National Dialogue process to move Ethiopia away from ethnic federalism toward administrative regions organized around geography and economic integration.
Many observers interpret this as the triumph of Ethiopianist constitutional thinking over ethnically defined federalism.
That interpretation, however, risks overlooking the deeper transformation taking place.
Removing ethnic labels from regional boundaries does not necessarily eliminate ethnically structured power. If decision-making continues to follow demographic weight within centralized institutions, the disappearance of ethnic regions may simply coexist with a political system in which larger constituencies continue to determine national outcomes while smaller ones negotiate concessions.
The state may become geographically organized while remaining politically majoritarian.
The recent transformation of Addis Ababa illustrates this broader dynamic. The city increasingly reflects the demographic, cultural, and economic rise of Oromo political influence, suggesting that centralization alone may not restore the political landscape many traditional Ethiopianists once envisioned.
For Amhara politicians, this creates an uncomfortable paradox. The centralized state they long advocated may no longer be one in which they occupy the political center.
The past several years have forced an unprecedented reckoning among an Amhara intelligentsia that historically understood state power as an instrument of national cohesion rather than ethnic exclusion.
Many now find themselves confronting the same center–periphery dynamics that previously drove other communities toward liberation movements—movements that Amhara political traditions often dismissed as unpatriotic or difficult to understand.
This is the dilemma confronting Amhara politics.
Should it support constitutional reforms that dismantle ethnic federalism, knowing that the resulting political order may institutionalize Oromo demographic predominance?
Or should it reject those reforms, even if doing so requires embracing the very ethnonational politics that many Amhara intellectuals historically criticized?
The emerging divisions within the Fano movement suggest that this debate is already underway.
Figures such as Zemene Kassie and the Amhara Fano National Force (AFNF) articulate an “Amhara First” vision centered on protecting the territorial integrity and political autonomy of the Amhara region.
This stands in marked contrast to the Ethiopianist orientation associated with Eskinder Nega and the Amhara Fano Popular Organization (AFPO), whose political project rests on the assumption that a post-ethnic Ethiopian state remains both achievable and desirable.
The balance appears to be shifting toward the former. The newly established Amhara Fano National Movement (AFNM), created through the merger of AFNF and AFPO, has elevated Zemene Kassie’s regionalist approach as a more influential force within the movement. Eskinder Nega’s Ethiopianist project now occupies a more contested and uncertain position within the evolving Fano landscape.
If this trajectory continues, Amhara politics may be entering a phase that would once have seemed almost unimaginable: defining itself primarily as a regional national movement rather than as the custodian of a unified Ethiopian political tradition.
Against this backdrop, the constitutional changes expected from the National Dialogue may compel Amhara politics to take an irreversible position on the question of ethnic politics.
Whether it embraces a post-ethnic Ethiopian state or adopts a more explicitly regional political identity, the decision will have consequences far beyond constitutional design. It will shape the future trajectory of Amhara politics, Ethiopia’s federal order, and the wider balance of power in the Horn of Africa.
If Abiy Ahmed succeeds in bringing the Amhara political establishment behind his reforms, one of the most significant obstacles to his broader regional strategy would be removed. The alignment among anti-government forces—including elements within Fano, the TPLF, Eritrea, and Sudanese actors—would lose one of its most important links. The government would gain greater freedom of movement across the strategic Amhara corridor in any future confrontation involving Tigray or Eritrea.
For supporters of the reforms, this could strengthen state cohesion and reduce the likelihood of prolonged internal fragmentation.
This, however, would come at the cost of dissolving the Amhara region’s ethnoterritorial status while leaving Amhara political influence permanently subordinate within a demographic hierarchy.
Rejecting the reforms carries equally profound implications.
Doing so would effectively place Amhara politics alongside the regional nationalist movements it has historically opposed. It would represent an acknowledgment that Amhara interests, like those of other regional constituencies, may be best protected through robust territorial autonomy rather than through claims to Ethiopia’s political center.
In other words, Amhara politics would have to cease to be the politics of the center and embrace the politics of the periphery.
Such a shift would amount to a profound break with one of the defining traditions of modern Ethiopian politics.
The National Dialogue, therefore, is about more than constitutional redesign. It may determine whether Amhara politics continues to see itself as the custodian of the Ethiopian state or adapts to a political order in which it becomes one regional constituency among several competing for influence.
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While this commentary contains the author’s opinions, Ethiopia Insight will correct factual errors.
Main photo: Zemene Kassie delivers a speech during a graduation ceremony for Fano recruits in Metekel, July 2026. Source: Social media.
Published under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. You may not use the material for commercial purposes.
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