Abstract:
Recently, protest politics was becoming the common form of political participation in
Ethiopian politics. However, it was the reviled political space that eyed negatively by the
government of the country. Due to this fact, many losses had occurred in the country. Thus,
aware of this information, the main objective of this study was to assess the causes, nature and
consequence of protest politics in Woldia town. The researcher used sequential exploratory
design by referring both primary and secondary data. The study used social movement
approaches as a theoretical framework. The essential data were attained by questionnaire,
focus group discussions, documents and interviews. A total of 218 respondents were
administered in three kebeles of Woldia town through simple random sampling technique; and
this data was analyzed through percentage and cross tabulation. 26 interviewees were also
selected in purposive and snow ball techniques for qualitative data and analyzed thematically
which was supported in simple descriptive statistics. The study uncovered that the protest was
ascribed as: repressive and ideology engrained, death escorted, weakly managed, and fiercely
resisted. The study also revealed that economic and political related factors were the
foundational causes that begot protest politics in Woldia town. Besides, ethnic slurs, spillover
effects and military interventions were the immediate causes. Moreover, political freedom and
sacking of officials were the immediate political outcomes of the protest; and, procedural
changes, non-institutional outcomes, politicization of ethnicity and path- depended reforms
were the implications of the protest on political dimensions. Furthermore, suspicion, hatred,
displacement, mob-decision, exclusion and violent behavior were propagated with the eruption
of the political protest. In sum, ethnic political system caused the protest and the life and death
escorted protest in turn, brought both positive and negative outcomes to the people of the study
area. Thus, as the Tigrians and Amharas were seemingly on the verge of enmity lines; the two
regional leaders should entertain public to public relation, leader to leader togetherness,
religious intervention, ingenuity to the people, to minimize ethnic division and to back into
normalcy.
Key Terms: Political, Protest, Repression, Tigray People Liberation Front, Woldia