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Ethiopia The Vanguard Party
The government announced the formation of the Workers'
Party of Ethiopia (WPE) on September 12, 1984, the tenth
anniversary of the revolution. Regional and local COPWE
branches were transformed into WPE instruments, and it was
announced that party congresses would be held at five-year
intervals. These congresses would be responsible for
electing the party Central Committee, a body of 183 members
as of 1987. The Central Committee normally met twice a year.
Among its duties was the election of the WPE's Political
Bureau, the general secretary, and members of the WPE
Secretariat. However, the Central Committee was too large
and diverse to serve as an effective decision-making body.
Although in the late 1980s more than half of the Central
Committee's full members were former police or former
military personnel, the Central Committee also included
peasants, workers, trade union members, and representatives
of various mass organizations.
The WPE Political Bureau had eleven full members and six
alternate members. The Derg's Standing Committee and the
COPWE Executive Committee had comprised the Derg's seven
most influential members. The additional four members
appointed to the WPE were two civilian ideologues and two
career technocrats, who in the years leading up to the WPE's
inauguration had become responsible for the day-to-day
direction of party matters and who evidently had Mengistu's
confidence.
The WPE's Political Bureau was the country's most important
decision-making body. Although the Political Bureau's
decisions were always made in secret, there was evidence
that General Secretary Mengistu's wishes generally
prevailed, no matter what the opposition. One observer
suggested that whatever power or influence other Political
Bureau members exerted was owed more to their closeness to
Mengistu than to any formal positions they might occupy or
to their personal qualities. The Political Bureau,
therefore, was little more than a forum for the articulation
of policies already determined personally by Mengistu.
The paramount position of the WPE was enshrined in the 1987
constitution, which stated that the party should be "the
formulator of the country's development process and the
leading force of the state and in society." Indeed, the WPE
had become more important than the central government in
determining the direction of national and local policies.
Local party leaders sometimes possessed a great deal of
latitude in determining approaches to policy in their
regions as long as their decisions did not conflict with
objectives determined in Addis Ababa. At the national level,
highly politicized party representatives often exercised
greater influence than the Western-trained bureaucrats in
government ministries. It appeared that the government
bureaucracy had to follow the lead of the party and often
found its policies and procedures overridden by political
decisions.
At the national level, individuals from the military, the
government bureaucracy, and those ethnic groups (especially
Amhara and Tigray) that had historically endorsed the notion
of a unitary, "Greater Ethiopia" dominated the WPE. However,
below the level of the regional first secretary of the WPE,
the military and ethnic origins of party leadership became
less important.
Data as of 1991
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