Fetsum: Global Initiative VS Global Leadership and the urgency of conceptual unity in the face of our POTASH exploitation
The truth: We brought this regime by unlimited conformism and voluntary unity but we couldn’t get rid of it because of our chaotic resistance and destructive division. We are victims of our unwise decisions as
The truth: We brought this regime by unlimited conformism and voluntary unity but we couldn’t get rid of it because of our chaotic resistance and destructive division. We are victims of our unwise decisions as the fragmentation continue to elongate the dictatorship and exploitation of our wealth by internal and external forces. In the process of our unhealthy relationship, we are giving up our most precious wealth (Potash worth hundreds of billions of dollars) like we sacrificed our Bisha mineral resources for more intense oppression of our society.
According to www.mining-journal.com; August 23, 2016; “JP Morgan Chase has emerged with 9.12% of Eritrea-focused Danakali whose flagship operation is the Colluli potash project, a 50-50 joint venture with the Eritrean National Mining Company. JP Morgan is no stranger to Eritrea and already has an interest in Canada’s Nevsun Resources which operates Bisha, one of the few producing mines (copper-zinc) in the poverty-stricken and hugely under-developed East Africa country.”
GI Commentator: “Everything Eritrea has belongs to the evil man with the left over to his feeble lieutenants. This is another tool he will use against our people. We gave him ample time to exterminate us.”
As you have noticed by now, I have been writing articles one after another about our dire situation under the dictator. Throughout my experience of writing about 200 articles since 2012, I never purposely provoked anyone in our community unless provoked enough to challenge one using my freedom of expression to the limit. I don’t conform to our inhibitive culture nor do I see life meaningful with out living it to the fullest for me to say my mind without any restriction and political correctness; probably the only spiritual benefit I have had since I got involved on the Eritrean question of freedom and justice at the dire expense of my material condition.
The reason is simple: I have no personal interest in Eritrea beyond the well being of the society and I don’t negatively entertain what people think of my honest thoughts to that effect as a universal activist concerned about the condition of humanity wherever it applies. It was our pretentious culture that motivated me to break the taboos and freely relate to the Eritrean people infested with dysfunctional role models of fear, conformism and quietism that put the society in this despicable situation. Independent mindedness and simplicity were so important to me to never have been a member of any political organization or civic group, needless saying I am now one of the GIs because I found them relatively modest and activists with no vested personal interest in the future political life of Eritrea; more so even because I want to produce something global within the shrinking time frame of my life before facing mortality without regret.
I appreciate rational challenges and unique intellectual minds but no Eritrean intellectual with my limited contact ever stimulated my rebellious and straight-forward mind as much
as a person called Rezen that I prefer to take a chance calling Yoseph Gebrehiwot given the minor ideological differences we have had in between. Rezen is highly eloquent, expressive and analytic to the deepest but may be regrettably a little too rigid to only pursue his outlook instead of simultaneously directing his potential to the democratic dream of the Eritrean people with reasonable resilience.
I appreciate Rezen’s balanced review of my book “The curse of being and living It” as the only Eritrean intellectual that did it and highly value his personal opinion of it with great admiration. Thank you Rezen for being exceptional on this and look forward to working with you in the GI community sooner or later.
Shifting my focus to the main deal on the ground, I feel good investing my time on Bother Petros Tesfagherghis’s ideas; a man that delivered too much to our cause of independence, yet doing it with similar tenacity for our cause of freedom and justice.
Petros: ”The Global leadership movement is a good initiative – However to carry it out on the basis of bottom up is very difficult. It must be a compliment to top down. Top down is critical to its success. The late Tewolde Tesfamariam/Wedi Vacaro initiative was Top down. He managed to rally thousands around him because people particularly the young related to what he was saying.”
Comment: You made a big point saying the Bottom-Top strategy has to compliment the Top-Down strategy for none of the two can exist without its complementary dual pair. There must be a facilitating entity composed of the cream of the society to navigate the Down stratum of our society from the Top for the people to resolve their outstanding issue through global leadership. Wedi Vacaro was indeed the Top element of his movement but his ambition of organizing the election process of the committees and leaving the stage for the best actors of the dynamics to lead was in my opinion a Bottom-Top vision similar to the GI’s (based on his repeated statement that he was not interested in political power).
The Vacaroean strategy of global unification was certainly not developed enough to clearly specify its vision but I am sure from direct information that he was about to concentrate on fixing the bug beginning the Independence Day Festival (2014) that he had planed to spend in Washington DC with his people. He valued my criticisms of his movement (at Assenna) enough to contact me for discussing matters of common concern and planning to meet me in DC to start the purification process of the committees (from infiltration) and the election of new ones in the United States. Unfortunately, he hurt his back few days before his schedule for the rest to be history. By all measures of rationality though, the GI strategy is more organized and specified than brother Vaccaro’s movement, although incomparable with the brother’s mobilization capacity at least for now!
Petros: “It [Vaccaro’s success mobilizing the Eritreans] shows the Eritreans in diaspora- are looking for leadership with a clear objective – organizational structure – division of work to organize them. The most challenging part of our voice is to empower the people by raising the level of consciousness and be knowledgeable. . of the people who are looking for leadership. Knowledge will be the justice- seekers armour to protect them from ignorance and make them shine.”
Comment: Yes brother; our people “are looking for leadership with clear objective” –this is what we must in unison provide as the cream of the society. Awareness is the key to identifying qualified political leaders, so we need to involve in a common global movement that allows us to mobilize the people in that direction. The question is which strategy we should follow to install peace and freedom in the country.
In my opinion, our civic groups deserve maximum respect for relentlessly fighting the regime but had not come up with assertive global leadership despite their long experience of working separately with immobile success. As a result, the political gap remains unresolved despite the the humanitarian aspect of the resistance accomplishing something tangible; the UN Commission of Inquiry’s conclusive decision on the dictator’s crimes against humanity. The civic groups and the political parties now have the responsibility closing the gap through global leadership to overcome the void on the ground. We simply cannot jeopardize our society for anarchic political destination after the downfall of the regime and time is working against us that we are late as we stand, at least to my understanding. The resistance as it is can only produce lawlessness after the dictatorship for no entity that came to power through Top-Bottom ideology ever gave power to the people no matter how many groups promised otherwise in the past. HISTORY says that expecting freedom from an entity that replaces a regime independent of the people’s critical involvement was an illusive mind’s grasp of politics or shallow political vision of the naïve. Of course someone will definitely replace the dictatorship in the near future as a matter of natural necessity but we cannot afford repeating our experience and must make sure that the people dictate political terms in future Eritrea for the society to live with significant freedom and justice. We don’t have the luxury of relaxation at this point in time since anything can take place from now on including natural demise of the regime, so we need to be ready to politically manage the society’s humanitarian and security needs so that we don’t fall victims of external intervention and internal sabotage immediately after the removal of the problem.
In the flip of the coin, the GI will need to work more to complete its program and we know this very well. It has to come up with a critical tactic that guarantees leadership with tangible qualification to politically and diplomatically represent the entire Eritrean people, our Diaspora community at minimum; but only with all inclusive help of the opposition forces. The task force must quetion its strategy; if its plan of forming the committees from the ordinary component of the communities can produce a compatible global leadership respectable by international forces (US, UN, AU, EU, etc.). How about if it does not produce qualified intellectuals in the Global Leadership? Will nomination of at least some of the ultimate leaders from the society by combined intellectual energy be considered to form part of the leadership with those developed through the process of the Action Plan? Is this possible without the cooperation of the few adamant Civic groups? Is there something more to do to attract them to the vision beyond willingness and desire to involve them in this specification?
There is of course a sensation within the group that there must be minimum standards for a person to be in the global leadership but it must give this agenda time and energy to crystalize the mission without confusion by discussing the issue within and with any interested Eritrean activist in the process of reducing the ACTION PLAN (which is still a draft rather than a complete thesis) to practice. Yet, it would be more fruitful with all of us cooperating to work together because the GI clearly understands that its vision is just a proposal that needs to be progressively fine tuned by our collective mind and experience to qualify for appropriate solution to our standing problems.
Here is where we need people like you to help out my brother!! There is no obligation for anyone to stick there anyway that another direction always remains an option that we can individually yield through, should the vision fail to serve the Eritrean people in achieving a qualified global leadership like I am part of it with this clear understanding.
Petros: “Consultation with other civil society organizations and listen to their concern and work together on a specific campaign can help. For example – the fact that the open letter to Professor Asmarom Legesse is written by 3 organizations (EFND, EGS, and PMEJ) is a good example. I wish you success in your radical initiative.”
Comment: I too believe consulting the existing Civic Groups and other organizations to work on specific campaign is necessary for us to do and that is what we are rigorously doing. We have a common campaign to prioritize which is conceptually unifying our resources under global leadership. The GI group as I said earlier is ready to discuss common issues for fruitful end with any Eritrean individual or group and putting it in practice as well. We have been repeatedly and tirelessly contacting individuals and groups; a testimony that can be proven with material evidence. Therefore, any problem associated with lack of feedback, rigidity and refusal to continue dialogue upon request is the responsibility of those that did/do not positively react to the opportunity but GI’s vision remains to be a winning amendment or inductive energy to the existing grassroots movements that should be entertained without a problem; the reason our people including religious leaders are slowly supporting it a few at a time.
We need to accept that none of us owns the ideology and any one of us can freely entertain and modify it to achieve universal success no matter who started it. None of us has the democratic right to dictate terms here on the basis of who started it but only to work together amending new ideas to the concept based on experience.
Something has to be clear to all of us, however, that Global leadership and Global Initiative are two fundamentally different concepts with their distinct responsibilities in the socio-political dynamics of our country. The two concepts are mutually exclusive in so far as their roles in the political life of the society are concerned. The Global Initiative understands that we won’t succeed without Global Leadership and wants to facilitate the process by which said Leadership is erected as part of the people, ceasing to exist then after; while the anticipated Leadership will have to play a critical political role immediately after the dictatorship and in the democratic future of the society.
I thank you brother Petros for helping me locate the letter to the opportunist Professor Asmerom written by the three organizations (EFND, EGS, and PMEJ). It is indeed a good example of working together by listening to each other but is that where the struggle stops! What is next and why cannot all of us work for Global Leadership to overcome the multi-dimensional challenge confronting the society with our differences untouched? They should come up with a remedy to their division and become good example of conceptual unity at this point in the fight.
What is the common strategy for their conceptual unity and how would they implement it to globalize their focus with other groups in the resistance? What really stood in the way of their unity throughout their long existence in the political arena? Are they different in ideology and are they willing to discuss common issues and concerns with the GI group towards achieving global leadership of our Diaspora community? Will they to the alternative teach the people about what we have to do to be a universally compatible force from their long practical experience? Should a group develop the tendency of rejecting similar groups by monopolizing social concepts and their applications on the claim of precedence? Can any Eritrean activist/s claim of having popular mandate to navigate the society’s questions of freedom and justice alone, rejecting other activist/s based on this school of thought? Who is supposed to give license to other Eritreans on how to pursue the grassroots movement? Isn’t is better to merge our differences and produce a hybrid solution with equal significance?
In conclusion, we need to be taught if the Civic groups have political interest in future Eritrea. There is no problem in that case as long as they come open and tell us that was so but we cannot complain about the division of the political parties while the civic groups remain divided because their conceptual unification precedes the conceptual unity of the parties that at least have different programs of running the country ahead to physically stay divided, though their conceptual division specifically to change the situation is regrettable. But what stops the civic and humanitarian groups from working for global leadership if they are really looking for democratic solution as portions of the ordinary Eritrean people?
The political parties are not working together with their autonomy intact because we as a “portion of the people” are not working together with our differences in place. We are drifting from our responsibility of conceptually unifying them by refusing to deliver a universal guideline as part and parcel of the people; rendering them like an abandoned child without a parent. In light of the reality on the ground, the division of the political parties as ambitious political leaders of future Eritrea is far more justified than the division of the Civic groups that claim of being part of the people, for there is no cake to simultaneously eat and have except eating or having it!
I seriously advice our civic and humanitarian branches to decide between political or public interest and form political parties in the first case but they cannot reject the people’s call for Global Leadership and claim of not having interest in the political future of our country at the same time obvious stating that veracity asserts the fittest and most down to earth defender of the people will eventually survive at the end of the day. In speaking my mind in this forum without any external influence, I feel dignified to invite (in the name of the GI group) Professor Sara Oqbai, Philosopher Yosef Gebrehiwot, the extraordinary writer that I talked about in my book brother Saleh Yenus, our creative diplomat Petros Tesfagherghis, the eloquent writer brother Nati of Canada, the Awate family including brother Salih Ghadi; our energetic humanitarian activists including sisters Elsa Chirum and Dr. Alganesh et al; to say the least; to give the GI a hand by supporting its universal vision with all the differences intact. Eritrea should not fail anymore with us alive. Please contact the group directly for involvement of any type or drop me a line in my email fezum@yahoo.com for written material and dialogue to this effect. I apologize for calling names that immediately came to my mind but I hope you understand the inclusive content of the message to forgive my inefficiency in this regard.
k.tewolde August 31, 2016
Forgive me Fitsum,’…..I have no personal interest in Eritrea……’ this is the second time I heard you say that besides describing your personal attributes and literary contributions in this medium.Don’t you think this is a display of grand entrance.Why don;t you let your work do the talking for you which you frequently get through feedback from commentators and your peers.You know there are everyday unsung heroes out there doing miracles quietly,making difference in peoples lives by dedicating their time,finances and physical being and they are not even related to the beneficiaries. Fitsum you doing it for your people, your country of birth and I am the first one to acknowledge,you doing a phenomenal job.Let’s stick to the issues that matter most. Kind regards with constructive intent.
memhir September 2, 2016
Mr. tewolde,
“…a display of grand entrance.”? Wow!.
Fetsum,
I am also a member of GI and I thank you!
Wedi Estaz September 2, 2016
why did you not invite Amanuel of Assenna the spearhead of of all the fights against the injustice in Eritrea and the one who who founded this site where you post your comments.I do not see your articles in Awate, but i see you admire Johar.
memhir September 3, 2016
Wedi Estaz,
Amanuel does not need invitation since he is already in, if I am not mistaken.
Of course I am assuming that you are asking this question in good faith.
Fetsum abraham September 3, 2016
Aman is in since the beginning and he is a huge asset that doent need invitation