We smirked, gave evil eyes, made private slanders and privately then and now we talked about the fact that, specially during the Dergue Era (The Marxist Ethiopian Revolutionary element) about such things like the ‘Korkoro line’. The ‘korkoro line’ is where any security sensitive area is lined up by empty used tins lined up on strings to round cover the areas of needing security so that – if any unwanted element was trying to transgress the compound other than through the authorised gates- would raise attention of the guards.

Is Somalia better now than under Siad Barre?

Is Zimbabwe better under Mugabe2 than under Mugabe1?

Is Ethiopia better under the current government (relatively democratic but unstable and can boil out at any time) than under Hailesellasie?

How about Sudan or Uganda and other similar African countries?

Would China be better a place now if it were as democratic as Russia is now?

The more learned fellows will probably help me with more contrasts here.

While I don’t claim to be some sort of a social-psychologist, we as humans perhaps have a tendency to believe in what we want to believe and accept what we want to accept. I am not sure if this has helped the plight of Africans as a whole and Eritreans in particular.

I suspect that you may have by now made the judgemental conclusion that this topic is going awry. However I am only putting forward a comparative perspective so that we ask, are we really realistically realistic to certain realities? On a second thought, it is actually going awry!

I find it difficult to see much of a difference between the ‘lined korkoros’ set up by the military to meet the challenges of the day and in todays technocratic age the CCTV or cameras in down town London. All providing their own legitimate reasons in their own circumstances.

A friend recently said to me while visiting London town he was asked by a couple strangers to take their photos against some backdrop, while he offered his services, he felt uneasy. This is perhaps to do with recent legislation coming out of parliament. Either to indirectly inform people or to make them wary, a man was recently arrested under a terrorist threat for taking architectural pictures in an area where development was taking place. In a stark contrast where a girl in ‘Senita, asmera’ was arrested during the dergue era for similar reasons, because she was writing a letter to her boyfriend who I believe was in Saudi Arabia in some corner, all those years ago.

No doubt even the goats in Africa know that government ministries there are corrupt. A Nigerian goat will probably go ‘miicHeecH…’ with a twisted mouth if you ask her.

There had been corresponding reports about Isaias Afwerki and his bank accounts in China while the Daily Telegraph in the UK (perhaps due to some internal revolutions) decided to tell us today rather than years ago (as it would be naïve to assume they did not know about it before) that almost every member of parliament had embezzled money. Most of them possibly more than what Isaias would have managed to clamour in 40 years or may be 18 years.

If you were annoyed by the ‘teftish’ in Asmera during the dergue era or now for that matter, the police in the UK have a legal right to stop and search at any occasion, of course those that they may have suspicions about just like the dergue military (I will doubt if every single reader of this article had actually been stopped and searched during the dergue era or now).

If you thought your mails via the ‘posta biet’ would have been intercepted during the dergue era or even now, I have no idea if this article would be screened by some one somewhere and if I was to come through some evidence of this it would certainly shock me but not surprise me.

If you thought that free speech was limited and curbed in those days of the dergue and now, try posting this article to the BBC or the Daily telegraph. (as irrelevant as it is in this case, first ask Awate’s permission as they don’t allow multi posting in other sites, just a note)

Is it ‘realy’ possible to say that had it a democratic paraphenelia as we know it, that Eritrea would have certainly been much more. My personal view is the border war would have been avoided (for various reasons that I don’t intend to get into), and that is by no means not immensly important but limted by time frame raising the question before and after wards.

I can’t help but wonder may be they knew (these dictators) that the places they ruled were hard to manage due to their demographic setup in a so called democratic processes. Could Saddam Hussein have been aware of the fault lines now we see unfolding in Iraq?

Hold your guns, after all even the so called dictators have got the adjective ‘democratic’ in their organisational names if not ‘the lion of Judah’.

The question is, is there a place for dictatorship, I mean a Godly dictatorship, more like a Dictato-cratic Demo-ship, if there is no such a thing may be that is what we need to create. Any takers?