A Fictititious Address by Isaias Afwerki,

President

Republic of Eritrea

Dear Eritreans,

�Ever since I came of age, since my teens, I have known only one passion: Eritrea, its land and its people.  This passion has driven me to give up a life of easy pleasures and comfort, which,  as a product of upper middle class Eritrea of the 1960s, were guaranteed to me.  

�Instead, I chose to join the field, to live amongst my oppressed people.  I have seen death and I have seen carnage.  I have been bombed by MIGs; I have been fired at by my enemies and by my own brothers.  I have gone for days without food or sleep.  I have slept certain that I wouldn�t wake up.   I have known friendship and I have known betrayal and, worst of all, I have seen my comrades die.    I have been acclimated to a life where I sleep for less than four hours a day, always interrupted by flashbacks.   I derive no pleasure from food; I eat seldom and only for a purpose.  I have been wounded and I have bled.   I have aches and pains: they are too many to count.  As to their causes, some I remember vividly, some not at all.  Books and arts used to comfort me, now they just bore me. 

�My passion, and that of all my compatriots, bore fruit and Eritrea was liberated.  This brought me my share of joy and pride, honest pride borne from a sense of mission accomplished.  Specially a mission with little prospect for success; a mission whose only strength was the justness of its cause.  Yes, I felt proud.  Indeed, it is the accomplishment of all the people but, seen objectively, it can be stated that I contributed more than my fair share.  What I felt was a feeling shared by a few; pride but not hubris.   It is honest pride.

�And so it was.  I resolved to live my life simply, basking in my accomplishments and the goodwill of a grateful nation.  And so I lived, the victory reinvigorated my drive and passion, and, regretfully, I came to see myself as irreplaceable to the progress of my nation.  Eritrea would march towards progress and democracy, but at a pace and means of my choosing.   I made deals and I signed treaties. I promoted and I demoted.  I made up my mind and I changed my mind.  I met some people and shunned some people.  I mesmerized, I inspired and I demoralized.  I built and I destroyed.   I prioritized and I stigmatized.   I held back time and I made up for lost time.  I sorted people and things alphabetically; just when they thought they had figured my next move, I re-sorted them by age, by height, and then by weight.   Unpredictability became my favorite game, a game I could always win because it is a game without rules.     

�But the game has its drawbacks.  Some refused to play the game.  Perennial losers, I called them, and the people agreed.  Who likes a spoilsport?  Others played the game for a while but then, they too started to complain.  We discovered that it was a fixed game, they said.   Come, now.  You helped write the rules of the game; aren�t you just being a sore loser?  Yes, yes, said the people. 

�And so I continued to play the game.  I made the deals and signed the treaties and promoted and demoted and made up my mind and changed it and I praised people and shunned people and stigmatized people.  I destroyed what I built and I rebuilt what I destroyed.  I reveled in my creativity and praised my creation.  And the people said it is good.

�But my strength has always been to look at things unemotionally and, objectively speaking, I am no longer making up for lost time.  My country remains the second poorest nation in the world.  A third of my beloved country is occupied by the United Nations.  A third of my people are displaced.  Another third lives in exile.   Half of those who live in the country are facing drought and famine.  I have enemies from within and enemies from without.  Those who used to admire me the most now ridicule me.  Those I used to ridicule, like Kenya, are now being praised for holding free and fair elections.   Worse, I have to hold my nose and ask to join the Arab League.

�Eritrea's enemies remain poised to declare our experiment, that of liberating and building a state, a failed one.   Millenia old nations full of failure and contradictions and mis-governance derive their only pleasure at the prospects of our failure.

�Yesterday, a drunk man approached me and he spoke.  Said he, �you have made a mess of things, wedi afom,� and left.  Are those the words of a drunk man?  Or have I created a nation where only the drunk and the insane speak the truth to power?

�Here�s my dilemma.  I want to leave the stage and be remembered as the Liberator of Eritrea.  I don�t want to be Africa�s new generation of The Big Men.    But who do I leave Eritrea to?  Where are all the young versions of Isaias?   I would even settle for a young version of Ahmed Nasser.  Between you and me, I would even settle for a young version of Herui Tedla Bairou.   But where are they? On the one hand, I see Eritreans with moral clarity and I see Eritreans who can design their own game of perpetual win to ensure Eritrea�s stability.  But I don�t see Eritreans who combine both skills.   Those with moral clarity are exclusivist; and those with the wisdom to be inclusive, have no moral clarity.  Not even within my own beloved Front.

�On the other hand, it is impossible for me to believe, and it would show no faith to believe, that the Eritrea for which I sacrificed so much hasn�t produced quite a few Isaiases, Ahmed Nassers, Seyoum Ogbamichael and all the revolutionaries of yesteryear.  Just because I don�t see them now doesn�t mean they don�t exist.

�And, now in my late fifties, I have come to this conclusion.  I have played this game so well, a game of unpredictability and it is only fitting that my last state act be an act of unpredictability.   I will introduce a bill at the next meeting of the national assembly, which will convene in February, to amend all laws that have been previously passed that impede on the rights of citizens.  I will bring to charge all the accused, to an open court of law, where they will have legal representation to face their accusers and defend themselves.  I will re-open the press.  I will see to it that the ratified Eritrean constitution is expeditiously implemented.  I will set in motion the wheels of reconciliation.    Finally, at our next organizational congress, I will not seek, nor accept, a nomination for a leadership position with the Front. 

�Meanwhile, I call on all Eritreans to enter into dialogue with a spirit of reconciliation and forgiveness, secure in the knowledge that all the wrong-doers will be sifted in an independent court of law.  I also call on all Eritrean political organizations to come home to help set the ground rules for peaceful competition.   It would be inappropriate for me to encroach on the internal matters of the Eritrean political organizations, but in the interest of national unity and stability, I call upon my comrade in arms, Comrade Seyoum Ogbamichael, Comrade Ahmed Nasser, Comrade Abdella Idris, Comrade Herui Tedla Bairou, Comrade Mesfin Hagos and all others who were in a leadership position during Eritrea�s armed struggle, to come home, to resign from their positions and to assume the role of dignified retired citizens, where their contributions to this experiment, this noble experiment of liberating and freeing a land and then governing it with the principles of justice and democracy, shall be taught to children and gratefully acknowledged by the Eritrean people.

�Thank you.  And God bless Eritrea.�

PS: You may send all your letters care of my good friend Saleh AA Younis at This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it