He said the government and members of the opposition, especially the political party of the Oromia people, had disagreed about the conditions for releasing prisoners.

To accelerate the process, Oromia opposition members inside and outside Ethiopia called for a boycott on Monday. Shops and banks in the province of Oromia were closed, and those who did not join the street protests largely stayed home, residents said. Activists said as many as 20 people were killed.

The boycott was officially canceled after Mr. Bekele was released on Tuesday, but Mr. Hallelujah said the protests had continued in many places.

“It’s easy to call a protest, but it’s very difficult to call it off,” he said. “It takes its own life and its own course.”

That is precisely what appears to have spooked the most powerful member of the four-party coalition, which has been facing down more than two years of demonstrations in the country’s most sensitive regions. The government cracked down against the protesters, and at least 669 people have been killed, according to the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission.

The ruling coalition, which has run the country since 1991 and controls every seat in Parliament, is also fracturing from within. Two of its marginalized members, representing the regions where the protests began, joined forces to contest the power of the coalition’s dominant member — an unexpected alliance of former enemies that, observers say, appears to be succeeding in challenging power.