In my article, “On the latest EGS Symposium for Human Right, Justice and Democracy (Final)” where about 10 professors participated to discuss on the general theme of: Exploring Possible Scenarios for Eritrean Transition to Democracy (March 8, 2014 in Virginia) I testified in writing that “I found Professor Araya Debessay being the champion of the symposium in my rating. He was the most practical intellectual in the crowd. The Professor strongly reminded the EGS family to create something concrete from the effort. He [supported me] sayi[ng] that international attention was after all a derivative of showing up with something visible; and that mobilizing the mass, articulating issues and developing linguistic communication were factors for success in this challenge. He clearly addressed the need for preparing a solid democratic substance before the government collapses because our future depends on what we do today! I left the scene wishing to be in his classes to see this man doing his intellectual damage into his students. I certainly have confidence on his capacity to play a big role in making the symposium successful and I am more than willing to help should the need for that exists. “

In “Dialog with Professor Araya Debessay on “The Role of Eritrean Scholars: the Duty to be Unbiased” (March 30, 2014), I quoted the good professor’s ““I believe Eritrean scholars should continue to agitate for the implementation of the constitution, the release of political prisoners, journalists, religious groups that are languishing in prison camps without any due process of the law. I believe it is the duty of Eritrean scholars to hold their government accountable for its dismal record and offer the way out. I believe much is expected of Eritrean scholars. I believe the Eritrean people expect Eritrean scholars to objectively and critically assess the ills of the nation and offer bold and constructive suggestions for the good of their country and the Eritrean people. Eritrean scholars should assume this responsibility as their national duty and indeed as their obligation. I also believe Eritrean scholars should not give a deaf ear and a blind eye to the suffering of their people. They should have the moral courage and intellectual integrity to speak on behalf of the voiceless and the oppressed.”

I closed that articles saying “God bless you Professor for your wisdom and determination to motivate our intellectuals into being practical. I feel sorry for the self induced brain drain of the educated members of our society. In the mean time we will continue the struggle hoping that one day soon we will be able to patch up our broken pedagogic pieces into a potent integrated force capable of bringing a lasting solution in Eritrea.”

Then we lost a very important revolutionary Brother Teulde Vacarro at the time we were so excited seeing a movement with relatively higher potential to rectify our problems one way or another. Many Eritreans felt disappointed going back to square one living with the vacuum created as a result of his departure continuing to separately scratch the regime as divided as we could have been.

In my article The immortal Wedi Vacarro, I concluded saying “nothing is permanent and everything will end no matter how we see things in this short and temporary existence. The departure of a special person in society does not mean the end of his/her philosophy as in the case of our martyrs that passed on before the end of the Eritrean struggle. The death of this genuine revolutionary should then motivate us to complete the pending assignment with greater sense of commitment and spirituality. As for him, there is no doubt in my mind that he will harvest what he sow in the resistance in comfortable absentia; remotely watching the inevitable success of the Eritrean struggle for freedom and democracy from within the territory of the Lord. God bless you brother for what you did to humanity in your extremely productive life and enjoy the pleasant consequence of your spiritual contribution in heaven. See you soon“

But there is time for everything, an opportunity for a benevolent mind to cleanly serve society with perseverance and consistency. So seems like the time finally came for the Professor to show up big for the bliss of the Eritrean people supporting OUR VOICE in their Diaspora unification effort which installed HOPE in our broken souls and for Brother Vacarro to telepathically enjoy the show from his new residence.

Reality asserts that people generate ideas for the public to develop or nurture through groupthink or to kill it with inaction. The very few exceptional, however, try hard to actualize their words overcoming all the hurdles in the way. One needs to be down-to-earth and dedicated to end up being practical in this tedious journey to liberty. That is how I see my hard working Brother Professor Araya Debessay who has been supporting me to produce more using his loving heart, outstanding modesty, simplicity, availability, humility and confidence. Congratulations Brother Araya for this major accomplishment that all Eritreans should personalize and work hard to make successful. Congratulations Brother Vacarro for having the opportunity to enjoy your dream of UNITY in your comfortable home through the magnificent appearance of OUR VOICE.

Credit must be due to those that deserve it. In this situation where very few intellectuals have been openly working against the dictatorship while the majority offering sympathy-in-veil or sleeping it on, I declare our Diaspora is full of educated people but the resistance has been deficient of them to navigate it properly. This is why any input from any scholar is greatly appreciated and encouraged. We need to take the maximum advantage of any opportunity in this regard and try to develop our scholastic treasure with effective intellectual resource management mechanism as much as we can for this class’s collective effort is what will eventually produce the badly needed STRATEGY or SENED that shall overcome the tragic situation of our country behind international support.

Apparently, K.Tewelde, in one of his comments advising me to take it easy of their identity said that; ”Some of the most game changing movements of the century came from diligent opaque characters from behind the scenes, not from narcissistic clowns that we created“ Brother Asihel Betsuamlak happens to be the man of the moment in this classification inventing the “Bottom Up” philosophy behind the screen that we are about to effectuate hand in hand as a preliminary or first step solution to the production of the SENED that will help us remove the disease on our own behind solid unity and international support.

There is no reason for failure here and I am confident we will crash the dictatorship together soon if we work harder under the current promising foundation.

Brother Asihel Betsuamlak, the master philosopher of UNITY behind this BOTTOM-UP strategy says to this effect; “Plenty political organizations and numerous civic and civil associations are operating simultaneously in different parts of the world. However, the resistance movement is suffering from absence of a united national mission, vision and grand strategy to defeat PFDJ’s dictatorship. The catastrophic nature of the situation in Eritrean in general and the suffering and disintegration of the youth in particular, and the dangers of further complacency confirm that a Unified Democratic and Civic Resistance is needed now more than ever.”

This has been our main problem so far, the reason we could not do anything worthwhile fighting the dictatorship beyond the localized resistance that could not so far penetrate the international community with assertive strategy to secular democracy. This was also the reason the dictator confidently denied the existence of opposition outside the country. He didn’t dismiss us all because we were few in number but only because we were not centralized. He is absolutely correct because no matter how many Eritreans may be in this fight (Civic and Humanitarian Organizations and Political Parties), the dictator knows that they cannot win unless all of them decide to work under a centralized command.

For said Unified Democratic and Civic Resistance to work though, the Civic Organizations among other things must first be willing to organize under a global leadership and this should be done as soon as possible. Why is this necessary for our success?

1)                   Because they are already organized and thus, should not be difficult for their leaders to influence their members in this direction: They can encourage them to work to this effect in their respective areas of residence internationally.

2)                   For (1) to work, the leaders of all Civic Organizations should initiate a conference to immediately consolidate an agreement to this effect in writing with their signatures on. We need to work professionally from now on to be efficient. Therefore OUR VOICE should as soon as possible release a memorandum sending it to each leader of the Civic Groups to cooperate in this area and inform the people about the result.

3)                   OUR VOICE must also contact all community organized committees all over the world to help this challenge succeed. Local committees anywhere must also assert their support through their signatures upon direct appeal from OUR VOICE.

4)                   OUR VOICE must contact the political groups or parties individually for solidarity that they must assure by signing a relevant document to this effect and inform us about the result so we can take a clear position on

Asihel says; “Most important, the core values – – tolerance, respect for diversity, reciprocity, and trust in each other — must be respected and preserved — in order for unity to be achieved among democratic and civic forces. Above all, the guiding principles of the United Democratic and Civic Resistance including Rule of Law and Transparency and Accountability need to be fully implemented in all facets of political and economic national life.”

Well we should be willing to practice said values for us to support each other with respect and build trust between one another. Every Eritrean in the cause should be allowed to be heard and every idea transparently processed. A mistake in this regard is bound to destroy the mission as a result of contradiction that I appeal to OUR VOICE to avoid by not taking us for granted like the regime and EDA have been, since they were born.

There should be no room from now on for breaching democratic values behind democratic mask. The era of claiming to be democratic and contradicting it in action must be over for a new beginning to replace the adamant, dictatorial and double-standard approach to democracy. The culture of genuine democracy through practical reduction of its values should start right now in this process for the young indoctrinated victims of Afwerkism to cleanse their minds and for the old byproducts of this hazardous philosophy to be effectively challenged.

You cannot sensor or ignore information or ideas and challenges that come in the way from any one of us, yet claiming to be democratic-minded. This mission will fail if we continue with pretentious-democracy like what the regime and the EDA politicians have been doing to the end of their demise.

In so stating, I feel blessed to appreciate Brother Amanuel Eyasu for his outstanding achievement in mobilizing the Diaspora mass and making it ready to be guided by our intellectuals under a central command. I uphold this tegadalai’s relentless effort and endurance to get us where we are with other dignified elements in the struggle. There is no doubt that he is the pride of our people with unlimited stamina and the symbol of the Eritrean resistance against all odds. I hope this revolutionary asset will upgrade the quality of his fight by investing his intelligence and determination on the search for the ultimate goal of our society, the SENNED to Asmara. Congratulations young man for all this success and good luck in your future activities behind the love of your people.

In conclusion, the major part of the struggle must focus towards transforming the minds of the people from the old anarchic, conformist and dictatorial culture to that of genuine democratic. We need to install the concepts of freedom of speech, transparency, groupthink and tolerance through practical relationship with each other if we aim at democratizing our society once and for all. Let us trash all the un-democratic cultures inherited from our society (Sikifta, killing the truth for taboos, domination, undermining, discrimination and assuming mandate to represent the people without substance, obstinacy, taking people for granted, secrecy, destructive competition, opacity, personification, etc.). Let us work from now on accepting the fact that no Eritrean is better than another to be blindly followed and allowed manipulating national agendas with imaginary mandate from the people (PFDJ and the dominant political parties in EDA, humanitarian elements, Civic Organizations). The old approach of assuming importance more than the other that has been negatively affecting our decent relationship with each other should crumble in favor of transparency and genuine brotherhood for us to succeed. We need to prepare ourselves with clean democratic mind before we regain our country from this exceptionally hazardous dictatorship and it is the responsibility of any citizen in this fight to make sure the values of democracy are respected in all activities we do. We cannot recycle the suffering we have been going through as a result of our failure to check and balance the democratic values of our leaders (the regime, Civic Organizations, humanitarian elements, intellectuals and EDA).

Finally, I appreciate the transparency of OUR VOICE in my last article on my opinion on their concept of self-exposure and history, and their response accepted. They concluded their clarification with “Anyway, Fitsum, we are particularly interested in some of the important points you have raised in your articles which we need to discuss further with you. Therefore, we would like to get in touch soon. You have our e-mail address. With regards”. Thank you for this respectful response; I, however, don’t want to pressurize you into this for now for I want you to concentrate on your work instead till the time naturally comes when we will sit down and discuss mutual matters in free spirit. I have no more issue with you on the two subject matters (self-exposure and history) I raised in my last articles for I accept your explanation on the first and take the second as your subjective opinion that cannot negatively agitate our decent relationship. God bless you for inviting me to contact you and I will when the time is ripe for it. For now enjoy the moment!