By Fetsum Abraham//4/20/2013

In this particular experience, an Afwerkist named Embasorya wrote “Fitsum Abraham has some kind of interest in Tigray. Business? In-laws in Tigray? If I were Fitsum I would immediately think of teaching position at EIT (Mai NefHi) after correcting my attitude towards Eritrea and Eritreans. Fitsum, nab lbKa temeles …before it is too late.”

Response: What ever you think about me is your business within your right of expression but I know there is nothing to teach in EIT but rather to control the kids, needless to tell you that I have nothing to correct towards my country because I am standing for the cause of its people’s freedom as I did during the struggle for independence. Your “Fitsum, nab lbKa temeles …before it is too late” threat, however, does not work with me as I feel confident of my spiritual position to continue the struggle to the end. You need to understand that people like you caused the problem and the fight is between the people and you and I guarantee you that it will be resolved either peacefully or violently. As for me, no Ethiopian scared me then and no Eritrean will ever scare me enough to retreat from this struggle for freedom. Intimidation is outdated in today’s Eritrean reality and you should rather be the one that must feel what you suggested since you are in the wrong side of humanity, history and justice. To rap it up, I resent being in this situation rather than teaching the kids at home because of the anti-freedom forces that shattered the Eritrean dream but I feel dignified to resist at least at individual level of the spiritual confrontation. Please feel free to directly face me at any time of your convenience if you want and we will see what happens.

Recognition: I salute Genet and Ghenet for being the most effective individuals in the forum on my last article against the clear cut infiltrators who are trying their best to divert the issues on the ground. They did not give them a room to sneak in and that is how intelligent people identify the weed and kill it before it mushrooms to spoil the plantation. What is interesting is that the pro government individuals are easy targets of intelligent people because they neither are creative to stimulate the crowd with new ideas nor can they learn from civilized interactions. In this experience alone some of the crap in the society have been weeded out through the intellectual might of the sisters. Thank you for this contribution and please continue fearlessly hammering that submissive and terrified mind till it succumbs or gets civilized as a result.

Questions of the moment: The Eritrean regime is permanently condemned to fail on the fake excuse of external enemies and some Eritreans are failing to resist on the unjustified ‘weak opposition forces’ excuse. Failure is ‘vindicated’ through inexistent excuses in the first and opportunism through unjustified accusations in the second. Then comes Dawit with “Did woyane defeated the EPLFs as Fitsum would have us believe in the 1998 war? Absoutelty not. Let the Eastern European Mercenaries speak“, as if the intention of fighting wars was not to win them by any means necessary.

Is avoiding responsibility and reality via excuses and denials part of the Eritrean culture or this is a coincidence?

Apparently many Eritreans are stuck with the notion that the weakness of the opposition forces is responsible for their passivity. They hide behind “they are not effective enough to mobilize the mass under one focused political emblem” excuse.

The question is: So what? Are you doing your part to correct the problem? Can you face the fact that they are at least trying and are not necessarily the only portion of the society responsible for change? Do you understand that they cannot do it without your effort and that you have equal responsibility to change the situation?

Apparently, I have said what I had to say through the articles with a genuine interest to communicate with any one interested to help a desperate society in Eritrea. I believe the momentum for searching a practical solution has arrived as I have decided to focus on from now ahead.

I want to start this new topic thanking God for giving me the stamina and courage to spend the last few months vigorously sharing my subjective manifesto (on full time basis) on the Eritrean question based on concrete experience as neutral as I could have been. Life as suffering as it is, is meaningless without freedom and I am living mine accordingly. I would not hesitate to fight God for it let alone spiritually weak and selfish human beings who chose to hurt society thinking they will live forever. I am determined to do the best I can for freedom before I face mortality with clear awareness that I am getting old and do not have time to bullshit! Sorry for the expression. In other words; “ I will never flinch even an inch” from honestly and independently serving humanity wherever applicable.

I testify that Eritreans are freedom fighters without a doubt that do not hesitate to strike anywhere when confronted by those who tend to take them for a ride taking advantage of their straight forward nature. Many of us are, however, naïve for refusing to accept that some Eritreans are capable of hurting their society as any other enemy in history had been. We have a problem spotting the satanic forces with blind tenacity to victimize their innocent victims. We have a problem accepting that the Eritrean concept of independence has only achieved its first phase (territorial) with the final phase (freedom) being fought on today’s ground between the elements of oppression and those of liberty. We have a problem understanding that freedom is inherent to human life and that it is earned only by defending the freedom of others in our community. Some of us have no compassion to human suffering at home under our own cruel leaders. We lack consistency when it comes to FREEDOM by being a beast to external enemies and a mouth to the domestic.

History asserts that we were victims of the vicious Tedla Uqbit who betrayed our cause back in the days and Isaias Afwerki who is destroying our society today with intense determination. The two experiences under our own brothers went terribly wrong for reasons beyond this forum (2 out of 2; 100% crisis). It is time we wake up from this that no Eritrean including the opposition forces and individuals like me should ever be blindly trusted any longer without deep investigation on their merit. From now on, I will dedicate limited time to share my collective view on swiftly achieving democracy in the motherland and may then soon retire to work on my other spiritual objectives on the question of humanity (books and music) from universal point of view, hoping that the youth will take care of the rest; may God bless this experience!

Dawit Meconen: ”Dialogue among Eritreans is good but why limite to the youngsters. This sounds sinister that, among others, preys upon the young without experience of the past that our country gone through with malicious objective of sowing seeds of discord between the young and old as a means of Dividing and destroy our country etc.”

Response: The adamant, avenging, submissive, dictatorial and egocentric mentality inherited from the struggle can’t achieve peace and democracy in Eritrea. We are seeing it in practice in the country through this outrageous government as much as we do through the stagnant opposition forces in Addis, the useless haters and infiltrators that stick with the Weyane syndrome to justify the dictatorship, THE POWERMONGERING ACTIVITIES OF THE YOUTH and the quietist intellectual community of the society, with all respect to all of them. I think the young and the old should work together to change the Eritrean situation. The young delivers the creative energy and the old, wisdom and experience. The old is the medium between the era of the struggle for independence and today’s reality but the youth preferably should lead the future political parties in democratic Eritrea, needless to state that it has to take the responsibility of managing today’s fight for freedom at the front level of the resistance. The older generation brought independence without freedom and the youth must complete the objective by earning the missing link in our society at least at leadership level of the struggle if not at political power rank in the relationship. Being young alone should not, however, be the only basis for leadership and in fact is immaterial without charisma, wisdom, education and other qualities necessary to lead a society. Obama was 47 when elected not only because he was young but also charismatic, educated, diplomatic, organizer, unifier, orator, reader and writer, tolerant, visionary and most of all, wise and confident.

Not only theoretical knowledge of democracy and freedom but passion for and practical application of the perceptions are necessary for people to play significant role in democratizing a society: no one can nevertheless free anybody without first freeing the self from fear and inhibition (Evidence is Mr. Afwerki).
Petros Haile’s Input

This brother certainly impressed me for bringing timely questions relevant to our situation and has also been active in the forum for change; thank you. I will share my opinion on the first question here and deal with the others in the follow up depending on what may come from the participants in the associated forum.

Petros: “Is it possible to pressure the existing political parties to come together under one platform? And is there a popular movement [that] would take the task of pressuring?”

Troubleshooting: First, I praise all opposition forces for at least hanging on no matter how confusing their efforts have been. They are doing something honorable although divided. The fact that they were slow and ineffective, however, tells that they lack the capacity and focus to answer the call. This means they need help to correct the misunderstanding and to resolve their conflicts.

Second, the youth is trying to do something but it is egocentric, infiltrated, defocused emotional, divided and disorganized. This means it needs help to correct its mistakes and to resolve its internal conflicts as well.

The rest of the Diaspora in the resistance is consumed by fear and insecurity. It has no vision at all. It is neither educated enough to understand the deal on the ground nor conscious enough to enjoy freedom of speech: it is helplessly waiting for something to happen without a clear picture of the cause and effect of the dynamics. It is a pendulum that swings either way circumstantially conditioned to be manipulated by anyone that appears stronger (the government or the resistance). This portion of the society is what they call the mass in my understanding; that easily accepts unsubstantiated rumors and indoctrinations without abstract thinking process. You cannot blame this group for it does not even know what it is scared of to begin with.
The priority and its misplaced requirement
The current situation demands good relationship between all opposition forces (requirement) because the immediate Eritrean agenda is not forming a full-fledged government but only a “TRANSITIONAL or TEMPORARY GOVERNMENT” (priority) that takes us there. This priority cannot be achieved through political parties but only through equal participation of all forces under a single united front that builds the foundation for democracy.
Unfortunately, our forces (youth and the parties everywhere) are a step ahead in mentality and practice: they appear in competition to grab political power in post-Afwerki Eritrea. It is very hard to imagine about 33 opposition parties for about 5 million of us (one party per 150,000 people) having different national agendas to this extent of split without misunderstanding the priority of the resistance; yet, they do not feel obligated to inform us the reason for this premature insanity.

Why premature? Because the forces are more concentrating on strengthening their individual political parties, which should have waited until the dictatorship is over. This step is against the RESISTANCE’s immediate focus, which is a Transitional Government, the second being a democratically elected government. They appear to be in the second focus state of mind rather than in the first. The result would be disastrous unless corrected because of the procedural mislink cannot produce democracy since it is trying to accomplish the second focus without its prerequisite, the first focus. This is like planning to build a home in Africa before figuring out how to get there crossing the Atlantic Ocean, or expecting to do well in Calculus without going through Algebra and Trigonometry: It won’t work.

I may be monotonous here but please hang with me because we need to have a clear picture about the journey to democratic life in Eritrea before we proceed. I am sure most of you know this but few others may not: be patient.

The first objective (focus) thus requires unlimited cooperation through down to earth relationship between all forces in the opposition camp similar to how we were conditioned during the struggle for independence. There should never be a comparative or competitive mentality in between since it benefits all equally: genuine relationship is the answer here.

The second objective (focus) requires organizing political parties with healthy competition for political power based on the merit (national program or policies) in post –Afwerki Eritrea: a genuine competition is the answer here.

Unfortunately, the procedure by which we can score our primary goal seems to be confused and misplaced by the collective opposition force in our society. They seem to be competing for political power without the process of democracy. This tells that they are fundamentally confused on the priority of the resistance itself or they are not honestly fighting for democracy. I do not think some of them clearly know what they want beyond political change in Eritrea and controlling political power after. Neither do I think some of them know the meaning of democracy with substantial academic control, unless they are erring on purpose. The fact that they are vulnerable preys of Afwerki’s divisive infiltration tells that something is wrong with their substance and intelligence. It does not take a given resistance this much time to impact its destination without confusion and inferior commonsense to the regime’s dull, predictable and monotonous intelligence. A well-organized united front cannot be remote controlled by the backward dictator in Asmara.

CATCH: The reason we were fighting under one organization during the struggle irrespective of our outlook differences, was because we had a fundamental issue that focused on INDEPENDENCE. And the reason we are now fighting the dictatorship is because we want a democratically elected government to run the country in order to implement our respective outlooks through political power because the first objective is done and we are working to complete the mission by accomplishing the second objective. Here the first focus necessitated unconditional unity and the second necessitated conditional (democratic) diversity: the first necessitated the unconditional convergence of all forces to one common focus and the second necessitated the divergence of all ideas confined within through different political parties for one of them to control power through election.

LIKEWISE, our first objective (TRANSITIONAL GOVERNMENT) requires our unconditional unity and the second objective (DEMOCRATIC ELECTION) requires conditional divergence, the condition being the CONSTITUTION.

REALITY

What we are doing now is focusing on the second objective bypassing the first focus by which the second focus can only be reduced to practice. We want to get the second objective without its fundamental foundation (the first focus).

EVIDENCE: at least 33 political parties and countless youth associations doing things differently behind doors and each claiming to represent the people without any contact and political education. Democracy is impossible in this situation like it is impossible to have a baby without a mother. The only mother of DEMOCRACY is a TRANSITIONAL GOVERNMENT..PERIOD.

In view of Afwerki, the RESISTANCE does not exist but there are individuals that serve the collective interest of the US and the Weyanes against Eritrea. There is no doubt that he understands the movement has missed its priority (transitional government), thus is doomed to fail. This theory has already been proven time and again. The mass then remains absent from the resistance in the dormancy of the forces to effectively challenge the allegation through unconditional unity. And the Afwerki regime easily continues to uselessly float on the society as usual without any problem, meaning that the opposition forces could not as yet wake up to challenge the president’s total nullification of their existence. They are proving his theory from practical sensation of the matter. He does not take them as a threat because they are not: do you blame him?

Conclusion: It so seems like a solution to the problems of our forces will shift the tide in favor of the resistance in so far as the mass is concerned but as of today there is no popular movement that is capable of resolving the problems in order to elevate the confidence of the mass into neutralizing the regime out of the political game. The subtle popular demand for a solution that radiates from all of the above did not find yet a centralized united front to collect it together. The radiation is scattered all over the place with weak individual energies that cannot hurt the regime. Something has to transform it into a composite high-energy laser beam that can shake or trash the self-destructive regime in Asmara as soon as possible. They call this thing solid INTELLECTUAL INPUT.

The question is if there is a solution to all these, and the answer is yes. How difficult is it?  With correct focus and genuine intellectual participation I believe it is easy to bring change in Eritrea. See you soon for this, but please be respectful to our opposition forces in discussing them and acknowledge their effort if you want to be part of the solution.