The Eritrean people have calendars.  Not a conventional one; but one that helps them organize and make sense of time.  A farmer has plans for the year and few years more. In fact, he would be able to tell you his short term and long term plans. His short term plan will include: cultivating the land this season. Reaping the harvest next season. Selling his Hamra lam next year for the wedding of his son. He is certainly getting a grandchild from his daughter. Then? Then, �God might remember me!� They have a calendar in what they do; and they are prepared for what God will do. Importantly, they watch their calendar attentively.

Time is money.  "Time is a sword; if you don�t cut it, it cuts you."  In Eritrea, Time is an emergency room, 911 and ambulances. In case some people are not aware of it, it is aferkbu time in Eritrea. Eritrea needs a political ambulance to redeem it. People are dying; people are rotting in jails and the land is fast becoming a dry desert. Nothing is improving. A sense of choking air floats above the country. AIDS stalks; drought and famine loom. And we have not yet started to deal with maladies,  ignorance and maladministration.

The opposition is well prepared. Yes, well prepared -- that is, in terms of meetings and patting each other on the back for a successful meeting. Well done indeed. Hey, there is something called lead or follow or get out of the way!

The leaders of the opposition need to take a crash course on time management. Can their supporters enroll them in such a course? They seem to have this sense of ample time and they take things with much ease.  Don�t worry; be happy.  What they can do today, they will do three years from now; what they are doing now, they could have done three years ago.  Could it be that most of their supporters are busy with mortgage payments, college for their children, business plans and the daily routine of life in their adopted countries and that they don�t have this sense of urgency? Could it be that their stake is not as crucial as the people who are paying never-ending installments to the PFDJ with their blood: dying, dying, dead at last?

Ladies and gentlemen of the opposition camp: No knee jerks this time. Be tolerant and stay put when you are hammered. Trust us; you deserve it. You earned it. So stay put.

The Eritrean struggle is not about you or your stupid squabbles. It is not about your endless meetings and negotiations. It is not about preparing halls for you to come and repeat the same stale material and then to tell us �bAwet tezazimu.� It is not about your grudges, your jealousy, your envy and your lamentations. It is not about who among you becomes the queen-bee and who follows them. It is about the people who are calling for a salvation; it is about a country that needs to be salvaged.   Reflect on how your squabbles and petty posturing is needlessly delaying that.  Reflect on the fact that, right now, your political leadership does not inspire.  Reflect on its arrogance, its self-absorption, and its condescending attitude towards the people.  They walk and talk like Isaias, an Isaias without tanks; then they are surprised to learn that there are not enough people supporting them to get the tanks.    The people that you condescend and talk down to are not stupid: they don�t want to finance another PFDJ monstrosity in the making.

This fight is about a country that most of you wasted valuable years of your age serving. Maybe, down the road, you believed you were created to live in exile? Maybe you believed you were created to lament? Maybe you consider the struggle a profession that employs you until you drop dead? One should not struggle for the sake of struggling. One should struggle for the sake of achieving something. That needs a set target.

Wake up. Where is your timetable? Where is your strategy for salvation? When? A year from now? Ten, twenty years?  Who is the Noah and who is the Metusela and who is the Nabuchednezzar in Eritrean politics? Nobody wants to hear the �we will struggle for the next generation� crap. The next generation will better manage its affairs: better than you would ever imagine. We were cheated by the previous generation. We should not cheat the future generation. We will not be silent when we watch the next generation being cheated. That is our problem with the PFDJ. It will be our problem with anyone. What the generation of 2003 inherited was the squabbles of the seventies and eighties. We should not let the generation of 2023 inherit the squabbles of 2003.

Ask yourselves questions and answer then honestly.   When are you going to have new members apart from the loyal members who remained with you for the last decade or so? Is your average membership age going up or coming down? Do you recognize that most opposition organizations are aging? When are you going to establish real relations with countries that matter, regional and international, where the USA comes on top of the list? When are you going to have a hearing in the EU or Congress to get an un-wavering support for the Eritrean struggle? What are your short term and long-term goals? What have you done to assure Eritreans of your commitment to democracy with emphasis on accountability, transparency, peaceful and civil competition for power; your respect for freedom of expression and your tolerance to criticism? When will you salvage Eritrea?

Take the blindfolds off your eyes and buy yourself a compass. We have been led too far with one despot. A failed pilot, Isaias Afwerki, ended up taking us close to the abyss. Anyone trying to save Eritrea in a leadership position should assure us that they are not primarily aspiring for the seat of the failed pilot. If that is their primary goal, we beg them to get out of the game; no Eritrean is interested in where they sit. They can remain standing until the end of the world for that matter.

Leaders should not take the people for granted. They should sell their vision to the people and take their vision beyond folded papers that are often read in meeting halls around the world. They should start to implement their vision. Spell it. Show us your vision and your astute leadership. Earn the trust of the people because so far you haven�t been doing a great deal of that. No. We don�t count speech Jamborees in the Diaspora. We don�t count anything that remotely resembles the loathed Hizbawi Mekhete festivals. We count tangible, measurable achievements. Test yourselves. See how much you score. Then maybe you can see how grave the situation is.

Every political group and organization and any civil society should practice self-reflection. We badly need deep soul searching. If one is not committed to the task, there is no point in confusing the political landscape needlessly. Getting involved in politics should not be because of an ego drive; it is all right to be a bystander if there is not enough commitment. But we have to remember: the issue involves the whole four million Eritrean people and the whole country.

We have all noticed how the stupid squabbles of last October in Addis Ababa has demoralized the whole opposition spectrum. For the last four months or so, many people have shelved the struggle against oppression and dictatorship and are fully submerged into a partisan noise that no one is interested in. By no one, we mean the bulk of the Eritrean people. Do you think someone rotting in jail is the least bit interested in what is happening in the �then I said, then he said, then they said� soap opera of the ELF-RC and the Alliance? Do you think a hungry soul is interested? Do you think someone who has to tiptoe among landmines in his ancestral village is interested? No one.   No one except the senior cadres and the political junkies are interested.

Having to keep the people in suspense is a crime. This issue should not be a life-long crisis. The opposition does not have to be true to the destructive Middle-Eastern culture of negotiating for generations without achieving anything. Please don�t give us an Israel-Palestine sort of negotiation that never ends from Camp David to Oslo to God knows where.

We at Awate have been taking insults and criticisms. We are thankful for those who criticized; we detest those whose only ability is to insult. The opposition has been insulted more than enough. We abhor those who insulted them. But they have not been criticized enough. They need to. They need to be kept on their toes. This is the people�s project they are handling. There is no easy ride here. They must learn to be criticized.

Many organizations need to adapt nationally inviting programs. Views should be moderated. The "nationality and sub-nationalities" issue should be re examined.  There is no justification for having a dozen organizations to achieve the same thing. You cannot be strong enough by scattering your resources. They are not advancing any interest. The people for whom they claim to struggle are not benefiting from what they are doing. Every organization should do a reality check: what have we achieved over the last ten years or so? Are the achievements commensurate with the effort put forth?

Eritrea needs salvation.   If Eritrea is to be saved before the PFDJ kills it, the Eritrean opposition needs to understand that Eritrean politics is way past the era of �vanguard movement� and �qalsna newiH iyu.�   Eritrean demographics is such that the overwhelming majority of Eritreans have absolutely no clue about who the leadership of the opposition are, much less what they are arguing about.  The Eritrean resistance is now at a stage that requires time management, goal setting, swift communication, honest assessment, coordinated lobbying and execution.   But at the rate the opposition is going, Eritrea will have to die before it receives salvation and redemption.  That is not a political program; that is a political version of religion.  

We urge them to reverse course and to honestly appraise their achievements thus far.  We urge them to consider that the first and only time they were seen as a threat by the PFDJ was when they were seen as united and able to rise over their squabbling.   We urge them to refrain from the navel-gazing, a favorite sport of their political cadres. Above all, we beg them to stop taking the Eritrean people for granted and to condescend to them.  The people deserve better than a stereo version of PFDJ.

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