The argument sounds compelling.  Its more recent advocate is Yemane Gebreab and it goes something like this.  You ask any Eritrean how long it will take us to reach an economic status of the developed nations, s/he will answer at least 20, 25.  Maybe 50, maybe even more.  But the same person who is realistic about our economic prospects will demand that the same poor, undeveloped nation demonstrate the political status of a nation which has been evolving for hundreds of years.

It sounds compelling, but it is full of holes.  For one, the request for patience, proposed as it is by the political director of the only legal party in Eritrea, in a discussion with members of the only legal party in Eritrea, and published in Hidri in the only legal type (government owned) of paper in the country,  has a self-serving quality to it.  Physicians have a diagnosis for people who talk to themselves and it is not wisdom. Our people don�t pityingly say of the deluded: �meskinay, zete Hizuwo.� 

The Perils of Self-Dialogue

A master at self-delusion, the PFDJ will now try to convince itself that its monologue is actually a dialogue ("zete") using the only tricks it knows: volume and frequency.  If I record myself at timed intervals in an echo chamber, while modulating the tempo and the pitch, I can make it sound as if multiples of people are having a dialogue.  Expect, now, the same actors of "hzbawi mekete" (actually, m'ezuz mekete) to have �hzbawi zete� announcements, followed by sessions and resolutions in the capitals of the world.  The purpose of the Alpha Zete was to define the parameters and the outliers of the upcoming choreographed Hzbawi Zete.   A fine zete you have, after you've gagged half the nation.  But such is the world of �guided democracy� for a Front which has taken the heavy burden of saving blind citizens from falling over the precipice, after it has sprayed the air with a blinding mist of pepper.  How exhausting it must be, to live with a mind set, as the PFDJ does, that your people are �special� but only in the �Special Olympics� way.

And how vain must one be to believe that the most fascinating conversations one can have is with one self?  At the national level, the perils of self-dialogue are many, ranging from the mild to the extreme.   In the mild peril category, one can cite boredom and nausea.  Everything has a limit, the sweet tastes sour after some time.  Wedi Tukabo has a unique gravely voice that is pleasant to hear.  Once.  Twice.  Ok, a dozen times but, after that much repetition, it is no more, as the artist says, geliu meAr geli'u I're: the meAr turns into I're.   After 14 back-to-back listening,  the noise you just heard is not his gravely voice but the CD crashing against the wall.  Zemen, indeed. Same with all politicians, which is why term-limits are a good idea. 

You have noticed, haven�t you, that the PFDJ cadres all speak the same way: they use the same tone, the same cadence, the same examples and the same metaphors.   In fact, I dare say that when people in the opposition were hesitant in their full embrace of the G-15, this affected manner of speaking had (has) something to do people�s reservation.  The two most prominent PFDJ-cadre-speak are the triple negatives (�izi ab bot�u kelo, kemzi keybelka, kemti ayibahalen iyu maletna aykonen kbehal yeka'al eyu�) and the mandatory preamble (qdmi izi H'to m�mlasna, deHer ilna temokrotat 30 Ametat�)  Zemen, indeed.

But those are the mild perils, the inconveniences.  The more serious, of course, is that a party, like a family, which relies on inter-breeding for its survival is statistically more likely to have stunted offspring.  (See also: British Royal family.) A party which makes love to itself is apt to  have disproportionately high defective ideas.  It is, ideologically speaking,  clinically dead.   And the PFDJ has been making love to itself for so long and so intensely it has gone blind.   At the very least, it has developed many, many blind spots.   Consider, for example, an opinion expressed by one of the panelists in Hidri�s discussion group: that the government should spell out its allegations against those accused. Even in nations that don�t have political pluralism, even in nations that are not even nations by the true definition of the word, what the participant said is considered an obvious fact.  But in PFDJ�s Eritrea, gasp,  it was uttered for the first time in 2005 (at a quasi-official level) and even then (a) there is no assurance that his idea will be heeded or (b) that he won't be hauled to some underground prison.   In fact, many of you reading what he said were, admit it, thinking to yourself, �I wonder if he is Weyane plant?�   That is how stunted your political growth has been thanks to PFDJ.

When Yemane complains that the same qualities PFDJ used to be praised for, it is being criticized for now, he is being disingenous, which seems to be a PFDJ creed.   To the international community, which looks at Eritrea and Ethiopia now using the same measures, the difference betwen then and now couldn't be more dramatic.  Here are two governments that have similar backgrounds, came to power at the same time and were given the same challenge: good governance.  Actually, the TPLF had a disadvantage: it had exponentially larger challenges of governance than Eritrea: bigger area, more people, more diversity, and very little in the way of goodwill.   The two started at a favorable place.  Then, seven years ago, they took 14 paces, in  opposing directions, as in a duel, counted, and started shooting.  An aghast world tsk-tsked them.  But since then, they have kept on moving:  one, TPLF, towards legitimacy; the other, PFDJ, towards illegitimacy.   And now, with the benefit of Zemen, people are judging.

The protest: but we are in unusual circumstances.  DiHnet hager.  Weyane.   But that is not honest.  There was no Weyane problem in 1997 when Ruth Simon, a journalist, was arrested for doing what journalists do: report.  A sample:  Dehai had 1,000 members then and I believe there were about 5 people that said that what the PFDJ did was wrong.  That is the danger of �guided democracy� led by a vanguard movement that does all the thinking for you:  Gual baElay kgebro, tkewn besero.    

The False Choice

One of oldest tricks of all politicians and debaters is to frame the ideas of your opponents in its most extreme version so that your ideas sound reasonable by comparison.   So here, Yemane presents the choice as if it is between those who believe in evolutionary politics and those who believe in big bang politics.  

But the real difference is not that.  Everyone, as far as I can tell from the political programs of the opposition, believes in the evolutionary politics that takes into account Eritrea's traditions, history and customs.  In fact, the opposition would say, with justification, that when it comes to traditions and customs, it is more respectful of Eritrea and Eritreans than the PFDJ.  The real difference is between two schools of evolutionary democracy:  between those, like Yemane Gebreab, who believe that this progress is linear and those who believe that this political evolution, just like the other more famous biological evolution, and just like every other discipline conceived by man, has spurts of growth.

The linear (Gobye) evolution proponents would argue that one should compare Eritrea 2005 with USA of 1791 and celebrate the fact that Eritrea does not sanction slavery, or burn women for practicing witchcraft or engage in a campaign of exterminating a whole ethnic group.   The spurts-of-growth evolutionary would say: I am sure Yemane Gebreab wears a Western suit, a watch, drives a Western car, uses a Western telephone and flies on a �Western� plane.  I am sure that if he is sick, he stays clear of a witch doctor and goes to a physician who practices �Western medicine.�  I am sure his children go to school to learn concepts and disciplines�Math, geography, science�developed in the West.  I am sure he is an advocate of international law�another Western concept.   And so on.   What we are saying, and I am sure that this is not lost on Yemane, is that just like all these concepts have now been standardized and are accepted as minimum measures of civilization, so are some basics of governance--including civil liberties, human rights and political pluralism and free press--accepted as minimum measures of governance.   It is so standardized that the world body�the same body that he and the PFDJ appeal to respect international treaties�has named it the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which, I am sure, Yemane Gebreab read before Eritrea signed on to it.

The Real Choice

The choice really is not between those who are prescribing a generic one-size-fits-all and those who have a customized solution.  The choice is not between organic and wholesale import.   The choice is between choice and no choice.  The problem is this: the values and practices that were, arguably, indispensable in helping the EPLF in achieving Eritrean independence�secrecy, hierarchy, centralization, top-down organization and dogmatic belief in the cause�are not only non-transferable but destructive in state-building.    A liberation front can argue credibly that it could not have as members people who were really not sure that Eritrean independence can be achieved or that the front they joined is the right one to achieve it (that still didn't give the organizations the right to liquidate dissent, by the way.)   But the front which, after all, is a military organization, needs the cohesion of like-minded people and has the right to treat with suspicion those who don�t.      But when this same liberation front becomes a government, it needs to shed this attitude and embrace the view that it is not only possible but necessary for people to disagree with its way of governance and  go further and guarantee their right�their right to say it, their right to organize people who think like them, and their right to work, peacefully, to bring about change and defeat it. 

Judging from the zete of Hdri Panelists�and what, I am sure, will follow now in hzbawi Zete--the PFDJ and its chief ideologues are still in the mindset of leading a military organization.  They are not in the mindset of a government, much less that of state-building.  Ideologues do not use their senses the way we ordinary mortals do: they are immune to what you and I consider self-evident, the choking of a nation, the strangulation of people, the abuse of a state.  Facts are disturbing because they introduce self-doubt, for which the true believer has no room.   When they are proven right, we the ordinary citizens, are grateful because they were able to see the future, while we were too burdened by the present to visualize it.  But when they are wrong, the results are so disastrous, nearly impossible to recover from.    

Yemane is saying to the faithful, have faith, you will see.  We are still right, still the visionaries you once have faith in.  And to those who don�t have faith, Yemane Gebreab and his fellow panelists (all in one voice, of course) are, trapped as they are in a relic nostalgia zone, still proposing bzey nahsia solution, which was last advocated at the beginning of their slippery slide manfesto of January 2001.  We all know what the bzey naHsia years have brought us: a police state, an unraveling nation.   

But with every passing year, the faithful are losing faith.  Faith requires innoncence and innocence was lost--in WiA, in Adi Abeito, in Track B, in countless other places.  People have seen the future of Eritrea with PFDJ at the helm and concluded that it is much the same as the present Eritrea, but only worse: a frightening reality.  

And the faithless are fashioning their own  response and by the time Yemane and his organization belatedly understand that their zete should have been more inclusive, less conditional and more trusting of the people, the terms of the zete will have changed dramatically.   

Paradoxically, the only way to have an all-inclusive zete is to exclude the advocates of self-zete.  And, more and more, people are concluding this will have to be done bzey nahsia.  And that is the real choice: whether we will follow the path of conditional or unconditional dialogue. zete bzey Qeidi or more of dnen, intezeyelo bzey NaHsia.

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