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Editorial
EDA, Page Two Those of us who advocate democracy need to remind ourselves that the decision-making process in democracies is a slow, sometimes agonizingly slow, process. Dictatorships are efficient, sometimes brutally efficient, because they require the decision of one person. Democracies, on the other hand, feature a process of deliberation, negotiation, compromise, renegotiation, and compromise again before decisions can be made by consensus or majority votes. It has been nearly six months since the EDA was formed and over four months since we wrote a single editorial about the subject. At the time, we said that “now it is our turn” and decided to give EDA the time and space it needed to build an organizational foundation for the new We believe that the challenges that confront the EDA are those that are common to all new organizations-- growing pains. Some organizations make it, and others don’t. The challenges are centered on creating a competent leadership and management team, identifying a mission statement, designing a strategy for delivering the goals identified in the mission, and a mechanism to constantly evaluate the processes that have been agreed upon. In all these areas, the EDA faces challenges that it must address, and address soon. Leadership And Management At the risk of stating the obvious, you can’t lead if nobody will follow. Since the leadership of EDA is democratically elected within the member organizations, it is safe to assume that they have the confidence of the rank-and-file members of their organizations. But the EDA is not trying to bring about a just and democratic This is not a definitive statement. In a normal political atmosphere, the leadership of political parties would go on a “listening tour” to listen to the people’s concerns, and then tune up their political platforms and, if necessary, their leadership to realign them with the people’s concerns. But political pluralism is illegal in In the absence of these reliable tools, the EDA is being forced to rely on a poor substitute—anecdotal information that may or may not be representative of the mainstream and cross-section view of the people. The point is that the collective leadership (of the EDA or of the individual organizations) has not been able to galvanize the people—there is no evidence, in a measurable way, that organizational membership rolls have increased or that it is pulling bigger crowds or that the people are seeking it out. Is this a vote of no confidence on the leadership? On its charter? On its strategy? We ask the EDA to consider the possibility that it is all of the above—and we hope the next session of the EDA will address its shortcomings with candor and then take corrective measures to rectify them. A Victory Strategy The strategy, as outlined by the EDA, is as follows:
Although it is premature to provide a report card on an alliance that is six-months old, it is fair to say that the charter has not motivated and galvanized people at the critical mass level. In our opinion, this deals with the combination of relying on “minimum program” (lowest common denominator) and the no-limit number of organizations which results in the lowest common denominator of multiple of fractions. This has a cumulative effect of watering down the message to near nothingness. And unfortunately, attitudes from some organizations have been as if they were forced into the EDA thus their obvious half-hearted support. We think that there is a need for a focused struggle targeting the oppressive PFDJ and shelving partisan politics and power struggle for the post-PFDJ period when there would be a level ground for partisan politics under an established and agreed upon rule. Now is the time to show full commitment to a united struggle and pulling resources towards achieving the main goal of the struggle. Streamlining “The Eritrean field cannot accommodate more than one front” was the cause of much of our bitter history—which saw its share of civil war. But the extreme argument, that “the Eritrean field can accommodate an unlimited number of fronts and political parties,” is a call for paralysis. The signatories to the EDA charter are sixteen organizations. It is very difficult to argue that all these organizations have distinct programs that would justify their reluctance to merge with other organizations. Last July, seven small groups united to form the Eritrean National Congress (ENC.) On top of decreasing the number of EDA members from 16 to 13, the ENC brought four other groups to the EDA. Three EDA member organizations, EPM, ELF-NC and ERDF (Sedege’e), have announced their intention to merge in December 2005 and that will bring the number of EDA members to 11. Notwithstanding recent developments, there is room for more streamlining on the basis of similarity of programs. In our view, the “Eritrean field” can accommodate three to four political parties on the basis of sufficiently different visions and alternatives. Everything else is duplication.
Seen strictly from a political program standpoint, there is very little, if any, difference in the political platforms outlined by, for example, ELF, ELF-RC and EDP and thus there is little justification, if any, why these political organizations should not merge into one. There is very little, if any, difference in the political platform of the Islamist organizations or the ethnic-rights organizations and thus, little justification, if any, why those organizations should not merge into an ethnic or religious blocs. In the long term, we are recommending a merger plan, after sufficient confidence-building measures between the organizations. In the short term, we are recommending the creation of three to four blocs, with distinct political programs. The blocs or coalitions within the EDA would be formed on the basis of a shared vision and not on the basis of the personal relationship between their leadership which is transient in most cases anyway. In other words, the merger should be a bottom-up and not a top-down process. The creation of the blocs and the coalitions would have many positive developments: First, an enlarged group helps builds the self-confidence of the membership as it would present an instant transformation and a sense of belonging in something big. Second, it would clarify the choices to the people: to some people, too many choices (EDA) is only a slight improvement over no choice at all (PFDJ.) One confuses and the other chokes. And third, it would institutionalize the practice of deliberation, negotiation, and compromise—the building blocks of democracy.
There are arguments against it. One is the fear that a merger could result in splintering which would demoralize the opposition further. Better be safe and stay with your small cohesive group. But fear of divorce is no argument for fear of marriage. The other fear is that such blocks would outgrow the EDA and present themselves as an alternative to the EDA. If the experiences of 2001-2005 have taught us anything, it is that the Eritrean opposition groups cannot be effective unless they all work within an umbrella group—thus, any future decision must adopt the concept of an umbrella group as the sine qua non for a victory strategy. The Civil Society We use the phrase ‘civil society’ very loosely by which we mean civic associations, human rights groups, news outlets, professional associations and our Eritrean version of think tanks—the ad hoc groups of scholars. For the six-month evaluation of the period to be fair, it must focus not just on the EDA but on all of us who kept calling on the organizations to work together. What have we done since? Here, the report card is also unimpressive. Many of our compatriots seem to have adopted the policy that the only two choices are perfection or inaction: their argument seems to be this: because the EDA is not yet what we want it to be, then we should not feel compelled to do anything to help. But the EDA won’t be what we want it to be without our action—and there is more to action besides wanton and ceaseless criticism. Within this civil society, there are some who, unfortunately, act more like competitors to the leadership of the EDA, while hiding behind the pretense that they are news organizations or think tanks. And there is enough experience out there to understand the motive behind some of the current vilifying campaigns against the EDA. We don’t want the EDA to be distracted by petty campaigns; however, we do hope the EDA would be proactive and launch an aggressive diplomatic and organizational offensive to be able to win enough support to present itself as the vehicle of change. When that happens, we believe all the one-man and two-man organizations with megaphones will be exposed for what they are: representative of nobody but their opinions. They will either join the campaign or they will be marginalized into irrelevance. The Motivation To those who forget, or are overwhelmed by the loud competing voices, we should keep in mind that:
What we need is not an opposition party but a resistance movement—one that recognizes the nature of PFDJ's oppression and creates a strategy to bring an immediate end to the suffering and humiliation of the Eritrean people. There will be time, plenty of time, to do “opposition politics” when the oppression ends. But now is the time to build a resistance movement. |
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