For as long as there has been dissent and opposition in Eritrea, opposition activists and leaders have called on the people to extend their support. And the people have always responded, "you can count on our support, but first you must unify your efforts." At long last, after countless fits and starts, the Eritrean opposition leaders have taken the first tangible tests to deliver. And now it is time for the Eritrean people to reciprocate in kind.
The formation of the Eritrean Democratic Alliance (EDA), the opposition umbrella group, is the fruit of the relentless efforts of the pro-democracy, pro-justice segment of Eritrea. It is the result of the efforts of Eritrean opposition parties, activists, neighbors, and well-wishers. Formed in December 2004 in Khartoum, Sudan, the umbrella group had its inaugural session in January and its second meeting in late February of this year. After three weeks of consultations and negotiations between a diverse set of organizations that reflect the diversity of Eritrea, the Alliance has set up a legislative body with a Secretariat chaired by Mr. Berhane "Hanjema" and a 9-member executive body, presided over by Mr. Hussein Khalifa. The executive body, having met in the first week of March, issued a statement informing the public that it has itemized its tasks, prioritizing conducting an outreach to Eritreans and neighboring countries as one of the first, and has already begun the campaign by meeting with Eritreans in Sudan.
We would like to congratulate the member organizations of the Eritrean Democratic Alliance for yielding to the will of the people and showing the required flexibility to place their organizational goals in the service of a greater good. We can find no comparison in Eritreas statehood or history where a group as diverse as the one that met at Khartoum has arrived at a charter that collectively guides our transition to democracy.
Right about here, the fourth or fifth paragraph, it is customary for writers to tell organizations what to do. We think we are now beyond that; it is time to identify what weall of us--can collectively do. It is time for every Eritrean to contribute his or her sharemorally, materially, financially, intellectuallyto make the EDA a success. Now that the politicians have gone one step, it is our turn to go two steps to meet them. This is the time to be engaged. This is the time to contribute.
A Clear Choice: Two Governments
What we have now, stated or otherwise, is a government-in-exile. The Executive Office is our "cabinet of ministers" and the Central Leadership is our "parliament." Some may not be convinced that a person is fit for the office assigned. Some may not be convinced that the Charter is as good as it could have been. Some may not agree with specific decisions that were made at certain junctures of the session. Some may disagree with the priorities as outlined by the Executive Office. Some may feel that their organization compromised too much. But all of these are good problemsthey are problems of democracy. They are all subject to change and revision. The way to increase the odds for our ideas to prevail is to play by the rules of democracy: bring people who think like us into the movement, engage in discussions, debates and lobbying to convince others to adopt our views and then wait for our turn, when the next voting cycle is repeated.
Our compatriots who are trapped inor have freely chosenthe so-called government of Eritrea cannot make such claims. There is no Executive Office, there is no Central Leadership; there is only one man. He is constrained neither by rules, nor law: his word is the law and his moods are the rule. There is no negotiation, no lobbying: he orders, you follow. You move where he allows you to move; you read what he allows you to read; and you watch what Eri-TV wants you to watch. The only thing that holds the system together is FEAR and EMPTY PROMISES: fear of enemies, which multiply by the day. Fear of foreign enemies: Ethiopia, CIA, Western press. And fear of internal enemies: non-sanctioned religion practitioners; "greedy businessmen","traitors", and the "fifth columnists."
Change in Eritrea is going to come from within Eritrea. Dictatorships have their own dialectic: a tyrant constantly lives in fear that someones star is rising faster than the dictators fall. To ensure that he is unchallenged, he is constantly rotating, demoting, promoting and freezing and jailing people. Todays rising star is tomorrows "traitor" and yesterdays has-been is todays rehabilitated star. Eventually, there will be another group who no longer want to play by the rules of this rigged game and when they do, they will not be writing a letter asking for a meeting.
No movement can succeed unless it establishes strong and enduring relationship with the people at the grassroots level. Understandably, this is difficult to do in a police state like Eritrea. But our efforts will not yield the desired results unless we establish contact first with the political class of Eritreastudents, professionals, civil servantsand then with the people at large. This requires an institutional presence in neighboring countries and physical presence, when possible, within Eritrea.
Setting Up A Task Force
There are things we in the opposition can do to speed up the downfall of the dictatorship and to provide Eritrea as smooth-landing as possible. Here, then, are our suggestions to the Executive Office of the Eritrean Democratic Alliance. These are the tasks we have given ourselves, as citizens, to help the Executive Office of the Eritrean Democratic Alliance meet its objectives. We are identifying the tasks, but their execution will require self-directed task forces, civil society groups that can go about the work with co-ordination but without much fanfare or self-aggrandizement. For the purposes of clarity, we are sorting them in accordance to the responsibilities of the six "Cabinet in exile" of the EDA:
1. Information: The Information office of the EDA has had a good beginning. It has issued summaries of all its meetings, in Tigrigna and Arabic. It has reported on the meeting that the EDA delegation had in areas with the largest concentration of Eritreans in Diasporathe Sudan. But it has yet to publish and distribute officially the Charter of the EDA.
We have given the EDA the customary "political honeymoon," a reprieve accorded to all new organizations and administrations as they transition themselves. We also understand that the Information Office is severely short-staffed and could use the help of any volunteer. But the days of Eritreans entrusting their fate to political leaders forever and waiting for "memrhi" are long gone. We say this not with distress, but with pride. As citizens, it is our responsibility to hold our leaders accountable, which cannot happen without the timely and free flow of information. To ask questions, to criticize, to express dissent is a crucial ingredient of the democratic Eritrea we want to build. And as citizens, we reserve the right to provide input, positive or negative, to developments as they unfold.
We remind the EDA to learn from the mistakes of PFDJ: information, specially the kind that belongs to the people, cannot be kept a secret in this age of information. The charter must be officially distributed expeditiously. Moreover, future developments must be reported on time and the Eritrean media outletswhat we havemust be invited so they can provide neutral and uncensored reports. The lessons of all the splits of the organizations should also be learned: events that have been held in closed sessions without the presence of reporterslike organizational meetings and congresseswere reported in dramatically different terms by the two antagonist sides after the split. The EDA must fully and wholeheartedly embrace the principle of having a free press as a crucial ingredient of building democracy EVEN if it believes that the media are biased.
Some of the member organizations of the EDA also have websites and radio outlets. It would be a good idea to pool their resources so they can present a stronger and more unified delivery of their messages which, we believe, should be focused towards highlighting the injustices the people of Eritrea are subjected to in the hands of the PFDJ.
2. Foreign Affairs: Precious little is known about the state of Eritrean opposition by Western nations and what is known is very distorted and out of date. For example, the CIA, in its world factbook, draws this profile of the Eritrean "pressure groups":
, which is conducting gold exploration in Western Eritrea that could elongate the regimes life at the expense of the Eritrean people. 3. Social Affairs: What is the population of Eritreans inside and outside Eritrea? What is the population breakdown by host country? What is the biggest problem the people are facing in Eritrea? In their host countries? We should find answers to these and other questions, which are guarded as state secrets by police states like Eritrea, who monopolize the information to enable them to divide and rule the people. The EDA has taken a good first step by meeting with the Eritrean refugees in Sudan and listening to their heart wrenching stories which, we are sure, was new information to many of our compatriots. Similar efforts must be conducted in every nation where Eritreans reside in large numbers.
4. Military/Security: The EDA has found a compromise position between advocates of "peaceful change" and those who propose "by any means necessary." The compromise language says that the means of the struggle is something that will be reviewed at each stage of the opposition and authorized by the Central Leadership. While this is an improvement over the previous situation, we think the next step is to integrate the armed wings under one unified commandwhich is the only guarantee that forces will be highly disciplined and accountable to the will of the people.
And what should its role be? From our perspective, the role of the EDAs military is not to open warfare on the Eritrean Defense Forces (EDF) who are, lest we forget, a conscript army but to provide a sanctuary to the EDF, who are trickling to Sudan and Ethiopia, in big numbers, despite the "shoot to kill" orders they face. The second role of the EDA military is to protect the EDA, its institutions, its members and its political leadership. The history of PFDJ shows that it is not beyond assassinations to achieve its political aim calculating that a movement without a leadership will disintegrate.
Conclusions
The EDA is a good beginning. Those who are dissatisfied with its current political programs or the election of certain officers to certain positions have the responsibility to be engaged and work for the changes they would like to see. They have been harping from the fringes for far too long. We should volunteer our time, money and labor to make the EDA a success. The EDA leadership should provide information on a timely basis and make room for civil society and the media recognizing that both are an indispensable component of democracy. Both the EDA and the peoplerepresented by scholars, intellectuals, think tanks, advisory committees--should identify tasks and work on them in a co-ordinated manner to shorten the life of the oppressive PFDJ and reign in an era of peace, equality, democracy and justice.
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