History
Before it became the government in 1991, the EPRDF was a rebel group battling the military junta known as the Derg. Formed from the union of the TPLF and the Ethiopian Peoples Democratic Movement (EPDM) in early 1989, they were later joined by the OPDO (Oromo of the TPLF and EPLF, and Oromo members of EPDM) and the Ethiopian Democratic Officers’ Revolutionary Movement (a small body of Derg officers captured by TPLF, most notably at Shire in February 1989, which was later disbanded after the establishment of the Transitional Government of Ethiopia.
In the early 1990s, following the collapse of the Mengistu Haile Mariam government, the EPRDF drew interest and support from the United States. Heritage Foundation Africa expert Michael Johns wrote that "there are some modestly encouraging signs that the front intends to abandon Mengistu's autocratic practices."
The EPRDF held its sixth party congress in September 2006 at Mek'ele in the Tigray Region.
Read more about this topic: Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“No cause is left but the most ancient of all, the one, in fact, that from the beginning of our history has determined the very existence of politics, the cause of freedom versus tyranny.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“To history therefore I must refer for answer, in which it would be an unhappy passage indeed, which should shew by what fatal indulgence of subordinate views and passions, a contest for an atom had defeated well founded prospects of giving liberty to half the globe.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“The steps toward the emancipation of women are first intellectual, then industrial, lastly legal and political. Great strides in the first two of these stages already have been made of millions of women who do not yet perceive that it is surely carrying them towards the last.”
—Ellen Battelle Dietrick, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 13, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)