| | As it rounds off its fifteenth year, the revolution in Ethiopia appears to have completed a distinct phase with the institutionalisation of the regime that came to power in 1974. Military rule has been supplemented, though not supplanted, with the Workers' Party of Ethiopia (WPE), founded in 1984, whose prescribed role is to be 'the guiding force of the state and the entire society' . The state itself, renamed the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, was given a constitution in 1987, in which the dominant role of the Party is enshrined. Considerable care and time were given to fashioning these institutions, and much effort expended in mobilising popular involvement in the process. The obvious intention was to draw the curtain on the previous phase, marked by military rule, lawlessness and violence, and to usher in a period of 'socialist construction' under the aegis of the WPE. |
