This is our final feedback to the group’s article (Why reinvent the wheel? A response to the Urgent Call to All Eritreans Worldwide) posted at Assenna.com on May 18, 2016.

First, we would like to thank all websites that posted our urgent call for action. We thank Asmarino for its outstanding contribution in agitating many people to give their names in support of the global grassroots movement. We thank the Assenna team for its hard work, deeply appreciate and admire Amanuel Eyasu’s recent message to the people. We also thank all our supporters for accelerating the young movement’s momentum in this promising beginning. We want to tell our supporters that we only displayed the first 100 individuals that gave their names and those who were not in the list will be displayed soon. We apologize for this inconvenience.

Quote of the moment: We neither can afford to let our political life monopolized by individual or group activists, nor should we any longer allow the confinement of our resistance within divided and localized projections. The role of a genuine grassroots movement is to transfer power to the people from autocratic politicians. The liberty of any citizen to check and balance the political and civic groups that claim to represent the people is therefore not a favor or privilege but a fundamental democratic right that we all should practice and respect.

In continuation with addressing the issues raised by the group representative about the Global Initiative, the article stated, “But if they truly believe in the bottom-up approach, we would like to respectfully ask why they think it would be appropriate to disregard the mandate of a coordinating committee that has been democratically elected to lead our grassroots movement”

We cannot answer this question for it is another misstatement that needs to be corrected. There is just no material substance available to support the allegation. The existence of said elected committees is a plus to the global initiatives for it would conserve the resources and workload that would be invested on the committee election process from the scratch in the cities that already went through it. That is why we directly contacted your group and still contacting you for discussion, patiently waiting for your positive attitude about the opportunity. Therefore, we neither are disregarding the mandate of the already established committees nor have we the right to do so but rather interested in energizing and radiating your localized and stagnated effort internationally. We are interested studying the committees for legitimacy and purity from infiltration as well discussed in the last article; that is all we want to do with the existing committees. There should not be conflict of interest concerning this matter because our suggestion can only help us all in the long run and we see it as our basic right to do as members of the grassroots movement that you claim to be part of. Likewise, GIEEGM should not have any problem respecting the right of any interested Eritrean group or individual requesting information as to how to join it and it operates.

You also said; “we would like to take this opportunity to call upon all Deleyti Fithi in the Diaspora to join hands with us in the fight for democracy, justice and rule of law. As a non-partisan all-inclusive movement, we welcome anyone who believes in the common cause regardless of their political, civic or other affiliations. We encourage all Deleyti Fithi to be involved in the mobilization of their local communities and in the establishment of Bayto Adi in their respective cities. The Bayto Adi, which is the basic building block of our grassroots movement, is an essential element of our bottom-up approach. Therefore, please help us in establishing a Bayto Adi in your local communities, so we can join hands to form a united democratic movement and a global leadership.”

Where is the difference with us in this regard then if this is what you really believe in doing? Was not the ongoing mobilization of communities limited to regional unity until the point the global initiative came across? Why do you include “global leadership” as if it were your strategy and would you please materially substantiate the claim to the people for better understanding? Why don’t you support us if you are for global leadership like we are supporting you for being part of the generic grassroots movement in general?

As for GIEEGM’s position, we welcome this appeal and joyfully offer solidarity by telling you that we are ready to do anything in our capacity to help out based on constructive dialog. We are willing to directly work with your group in achieving this sacred project because we believe doing it together with relative equality would produce a better and faster result.

The truth shall be told, however, that when we started the discussion of forming the Global Initiative to Empower Eritrean Grassroots Movement, members of Hizbawi Mele’al representing the alliance of the cities that have already formed grassroots movement in their respective cities, along with members of NegabaE, Our Voice, and other advocates had participated at a teleconference. Unfortunately, the individuals representing Hizbawi Mele’al refused to participate in follow up discussions despite repeated invitations and reminders and we have documents and email messages to backup the attempts we have made for any inquisitive Eritrean that wants to know.

In light of this, we respectfully challenge you in public to spell out what you want us to do to help the situation and how you think we should work together to have democratically elected committees in other cities. What are your short and long terms of strategy and what has so far been achieved in the areas of diplomacy with the international community? Have you ever had contact with the desperate Eritrean refugees today suffering in big cities of the world because of lack of unified resistance capable of collecting the accessible international funds for their rehabilitation? Have you been effectively informing the Eritrean people about the progress and challenges of your activities through any form of transparent communication? Can we see your ultimate program, strategy and progress report on paper?

In sharing our opinion, although the term Global may have been used by few of our civic groups, we hardly witnessed any tangible forward movement through the years, yet because of lack of all inclusive strategy. Their vision was indeed limited to globally organizing Eritreans within individual groups and showing solidarity with each other vis-à-vis the political situation of our country. We don’t think they ever had a documented vision to establish a legitimate global leadership that would have the highest authority managing our political, military, humanitarian and communal (refugees, etc) issues in general, the reason they could not go beyond their groups to penetrate the international community for material and moral support.

The current global initiative, however, envisions organizing all Eritreans under a single centralized authority that represents all of us and would eventually carry out the political, rehabilitation, and diplomatic responsibilities of our society until the downfall of the dictatorship and that further assures security and secular democracy through legitimate transitional government in post Afwerki Eritrea. This, among others is our fundamental difference that our people should clearly understand.

There is no doubt that we have been amicably contacting the members of the opposition camp including the political parties individually for support, though we have not finished yet and still doing maximum effort to fully accomplish this task with our limited resources and capacity. We are doing this patiently and repeatedly without being agitated for lack of feedback in few cases. We want to clarify misunderstandings and discuss any matters of concern with any interested individual, group or political party religiously believing that open dialogue, freedom of speech, transparency, reason and respect for democratic values and each other will rectify any drift in between.

We are not a threat but enhancement so to say for we have no interest being part of the global leadership that we anticipate to temporarily replace the regime until we democratically elect our leaders. We are neither a civic group nor an ambitious unit aiming at political power in the country but only ordinary facilitators of the process of democracy through global leadership; movers on otherwise like the rest of the people in this monotonous cycle of fragmentation. The expression “in parallel with other groups” does not thus correctly define our objective for we are only concerned activists that want to work as one of the layers of the grassroots movement in pleasant harmony with all elements of the opposition camp.

Although we have good support from the people so far, we also had minor obstacles from few groups and individuals that we expect to resolve as soon as possible through any rational means of resolution (debate, dialog, etc.). A high caliber member of the Global Initiative yet, grieves the situation as follows;

It has to be clear to our people that we demand the committees be neutral from the regime and the political parties (only at membership level) in order to let the people own their exclusive right of facilitating the process by which democracy prevails in Eritrea without destructive internal and external interference. In so doing, we expect the political parties respecting the people’s exclusive right to facilitate democracy in the country in exchange to the people’s respect of their right to run for political power through democratic process. The people and the political parties should then support the grassroots movement for global leadership based on this understanding.

To summarize, we believe we have fundamental difference with other groups at least on the question of transparency, on how we should guarantee purity (from infiltration) in the existing committees and continue electing new committees accordingly, on how to form the global leadership through Bottom-Up strategy, on what the role of the leadership will be in the society, on how to politically manage our refugee crisis, and on how the people and the political parties should support each other by recognizing and respecting their distinct responsibilities in the society’s democratic process.

Things take a little time to settle down though; and we should not be surprised by the little discomfort of few groups and individuals about the initiative as if it were another new group in the crowded political jam of the current environment.

This being the case, for you to say, “How can anyone claim allegiance to the bottom-up approach, while attempting to side step a democratically elected coordinating committee by parachuting down a self-appointed taskforce from the top.” is outrageous and outright disingenuous.

Do you have a problem revealing the process by which the committees have been elected to the people? Do we Eritreans have the right to check the integrity of the election process for legitimacy and how come you don’t cooperate if this was the case? Please remember that we did not propose to replace the committees with newly elected committees but only to have the chance of verifying them in accordance with the basic principles of the grassroots movement that we all claim to have been following so that we don’t suffer the consequence of external and internal sabotage in this rugged journey for a neutral and efficient global leadership. What is wrong with this proposal?

In keeping our determination to make the current stage that of the people’s, we further believe that everything we do as Eritrean activists must from now on be transparently communicated to the people. Our role is freely and impartially informing the people about what matters to their society. This is about freedom of speech and raising public awareness through unlimited access to information; empowering them to assert their rights into merging the different ideas for Strategic Unity though active participation. We encourage the people to reclaim their power from all forms of dictatorship by openly and respectfully challenging their leaders on the subject matter. The grassroots movement must fully depend on the people and no democratic oriented Eritrean should stand on the way of our initiative for we believe it is their most essential property by which the society can smoothly transit to democracy behind international support.

In conclusion, our mission is the direct derivative of our failed experience and we hope Eritreans in the opposition camp understand and cooperate to work together for the common cause. Our people’s comments about and criticisms on our activities are therefore very important for us to fine tune our performance and efficiency needless saying to guarantee trust and legitimate representation by maximizing our unity through transparent interaction.

In the mean time, The Urgent Call” that we have made public can be referred for full understanding of the Global Initiative’s intentions and structure and we humbly appeal to the people to support the strategy via direct contact with its active members or our email gieegm@googlegroups.com. Let the names flow with your specific backgrounds and talents in support of the people’s movement. Let us end self imposed inhibitions and brain-drain and utilize our collective resource for the freedom and democratic dream of the Eritrean people.

Long live the people’s movement towards global leadership!