Meles, 57, had not been seen in public since mid-July and missed several high-level meetings but officials had insisted he was taking a break to recover from an illness
“Prime minister Zenawi suddenly passed away last night. Meles was recovering in a hospital overseas for the past two months but died of a sudden infection at 11.40pm [on Monday],” said the broadcast, without specifying where he died
The former guerrilla and powerful leader ruled the country for more than 20 years after ousting communist leader Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1991. His death and failure to determine a smooth succession leaves a gaping hole not only in his fractured country but in regional diplomacy.
Revolutionary to statesman
1955 Born in Adwa, northern Ethiopia, to a Tigrayan father and an Eritrean mother
1974 Joins the Marxist- Leninist League of Tigray, within the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front, interrupting his studies after two years at Addis Ababa University’s medical faculty
1989 Becomes chairman of both the TPLF and the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, a coalition of the country’s four main political parties, each representing an ethnic community
1991-1995 Upon the overthrow of the Derg military junta led by Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam, becomes president of the Transitional Government of Ethiopia. Institutes ethnic federalism
1993 Allows Eritrean secession, rendering Ethiopia landlocked
1995 His election as prime minister sees him hailed as a symbol of democracy and as a leader in an African renaissance
2000 His re-election is marred by vote-rigging allegations and public protests.
May 2005 - Ethiopians vote again and amid claims the poll is fixed, 193 protesters and seven policemen are killed.
December 2006 - Ethiopia sends troops into Somalia to drive hardline Islamists from power. Troops withdraw from Somalia in January 2009.
May 2010 - Meles wins fourth term as prime minister. EU and US observers say the vote “fell short” of international standards.
July 2012 - Meles fails to attend the African Union summit in Addis Ababa and rumours of his illness grow.
Aug. 21, 2012 - Ethiopian state television reports that Meles died of a sudden infection late on Aug. 20.
In the region, Meles has sent Ethiopian troops into the failed state of Somalia twice seeking to overcome Islamist militants, as well as into territories disputed by Sudan and South Sudan, and offered adroit diplomacy on everything from conflict resolution to climate change.
At home, he suppressed dissent, imprisoned and exiled journalists and opposition figures and relied on a policy of ethnic federalism. In 2005 he was re-elected in polls marred by accusations of fraud, after which dozens of opposition protesters were killed.
HAILEMARIAM DESALEGN, DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER
Hailemariam Desalegn, deputy prime minister, who is also foreign minister, has to date stood in, but analysts and diplomats say a power struggle within Meles’s ruling Tigrean elite is more likely to deliver a Tigrean leader and throw the country into turmoil in the jockeying for position. Mr Hailemariam comes from a small ethnic group in the south and is considered an intermediate compromise as acting head of government.
“Meles was clearly grooming the guy but whether the [Tigrean party in the coalition government] TPLF will accept him and fall behind him is the question,” says an Ethiopia analyst who knows Mr Hailemariam and says he is a capable technocrat who can probably keep the country running but lacks charisma and party support.
Ethiopia faces internal dissent from several marginalised ethnic groups, including the southern Oromos and those in the Ogaden region in the east where the military has largely suppressed a separatist armed rebellion.
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