No compromise with the wave of protest is in view. The elite reckons it can weather the storm
The select of Ethiopia's elites, including opposition leaders, crowded into the Sheraton Addis Hotel on 15 October to discuss the country's fragile ethnic federation and stuttering democratisation. The fraternal atmosphere on display during a lunchtime buffet belied the chronic political paralysis that surrounds the deteriorating security situation in the Horn of Africa's powerhouse. At the forum, Bereket Simon, a stalwart of the ruling Ethiopian Peoples' Revolutionary Democratic Front, presented a standard defence of the multi-ethnic EPRDF coalition's record, playing once more on the improvements since the allied rebels overthrew the Derg military junta a quarter of a century ago.
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