In Ethiopia, it was an important and expected step in the implementation of the Pretoria peace agreement, the new civilian transitional government officially took office on Wednesday in Mekele, the capital of Tigray. The new president, Getachew Reda, political adviser to the outgoing president, will govern alongside vice presidents and a 26-member cabinet.
The new head of the interim regional executive of Tigray is therefore Getachew Reda. It was expected that he takes over from the one to whom he served as the main political adviser, Debretsion Gebremichael, in power in the region since 2018.
He has nine vice-presidents, most of them from the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), and from the Tigray Defense Forces, or a movement of “academics”. Its number 2 is military leader Tadesse Worede, in charge of “peace and security” and its number 3, is General Tsedkan Gebretinsae, the famous strategist, now in charge of “democratization and decentralized governance”.
Finally, 17 heads of office and members of the cabinet were appointed, including two executives from one of the Tigrayan opposition parties who agreed to join the interim executive, Water and Energy, and Transport.
The previous regional government was not recognized by the federal government. It was indeed the result of elections organized in 2020 in Tigray, just before the start of the war, when the ballot had been postponed everywhere else in the federation due to the Covid-19 pandemic.