# Tigray People's Liberation Front Founded at **Dedebit, Tigray, on 18 February 1975**, out of a student organisation formed the previous September. The TPLF fought the [[Derg]] for sixteen years, took Addis Ababa in 1991, and then wrote the constitutional architecture that Ethiopia still runs on — before being displaced from it in 2018 and fighting a catastrophic war over the displacement. ## From secession to state-building The TPLF's **1976 manifesto** framed the Ethiopian conflict as oppression by the Amhara and called for **Tigrayan independence**; it **abandoned separatism in 1978** in favour of overthrowing the central government outright. It was Marxist-Leninist through the liberation war, forming a vanguard **Marxist–Leninist League of Tigray in 1985**, and recast itself after 1991 as "revolutionary democracy." With the Ethiopian People's Democratic Movement it formed the **EPRDF** — dated to December 1988 by some sources and early 1989 by others — later joined by Oromo and southern affiliates. Under **Meles Zenawi** (transitional president from 28 May 1991, prime minister from 21 August 1995 until his death in Brussels on 20 August 2012), the EPRDF governed for twenty-seven years, and its parliamentary results tell you what kind of governing it was: **1995 — 463 of 544 seats; 2005 — 481; 2010 — 545 of 547; 2015 — every seat.** ## Article 39 The constitution adopted **8 December 1994** and in force from **21 August 1995** organised Ethiopia into ethno-linguistically defined regional states. **Article 39(1)** reads: > Every Nation, Nationality and People in Ethiopia has an unconditional right to self-determination, including the right to secession. Article 39(4) supplies the procedure: a two-thirds vote of the relevant nationality's legislative council; a federal referendum organised **within three years**; a majority in that referendum; then transfer of powers and division of assets. **No other constitution in force says this as plainly**, and it is the single most consequential document in modern Ethiopian politics. > [!important] ⭐ The clause was written by people who did not expect to be the minority > For twenty-seven years the party that drafted Article 39 also controlled the federal government, so the secession right was a guarantee it never had to test. In 2020 the same party found itself outside the federal government and facing it — and the question of whether Article 39 meant anything became a war. **A right that has only ever been held by the people who wrote it has not been tested; it has been assumed.** This generalises well beyond Ethiopia and is worth carrying to any argument about constitutional guarantees that have never been exercised against their authors. ## Displacement and war [[Abiy Ahmed]] became EPRDF chairman on **27 March 2018** and prime minister in April, removed TPLF figures from the military and intelligence services, and in **November 2019 dissolved the EPRDF into the Prosperity Party** — which the TPLF refused to join and was excluded from. Tigray held its own regional election in defiance on **9 September 2020** (TPLF: 98.2% of the vote, all 152 seats), the federal government declared it illegal and withheld the regional budget, and the [[Tigray War]] began on 4 November 2020. ## Since Pretoria The TPLF has split. **Getachew Reda**'s cooperative camp was removed from the interim regional administration in **April 2025**, replaced by Lt. Gen. Tadesse Werede, and Getachew founded an Addis-based opposition party; **Debretsion Gebremichael** leads the hardline faction. The electoral board suspended the TPLF's registration in February 2025 and **cancelled it in May 2025**. In November 2025 the TPLF declared no elections would be held in Tigray without reinstatement; **no voting took place there in the general election of 1 June 2026**. In **mid-July 2026** the TPLF declared the Pretoria agreement effectively dead, and fighting resumed in western Tigray on **1 August 2026**. ## See also [[Ethiopian History Hub]] · [[Tigray War]] · [[Abiy Ahmed]] · [[Derg]] · [[Federalism]]