OUR VOICE: “Mission Statement: The purpose of the Eritrean Grassroots Democratic Movement is to conduct primary elections all over the world where Eritreans live to make it possible for the people to democratically choose their own representatives from the bottom-up. The elected representatives will constitute the Provisional National Democratic Baito (PNDB). The electorate will have the right to recall their representatives if the later commit serious crime, or grossly misbehave putting the country in disrepute or if they do not do their jobs properly after three warnings. The Baito will in turn elect the Eritrean Global Leadership Council (or the Council). Until the removal of the dictatorship, the Council will act as the de facto Eritrean Provisional Government and will represent all Eritreans everywhere and speak on their behalf. The primary purpose of the Council will, however, be to facilitate the removal of the dictatorship at the earliest and establish democratic constitutional governance by conducting fresh elections in the NEW ERITREA The Council will conclude its task after successfully conducting free and fair elections and the establishment of the new Eritrean constitutional government.”

OUR VOICE: “Some people have asked, “Why don’t you join the already existing opposition groups? What is the need of re-inventing the wheel? We are tired of the proliferation of opposition political groups.”  We wish that it were as simple as stated.   Some of us were actually in some of the said opposition groups, and we have tried it.  We can only say that whether the opposition groups we have are few or many, we have not gone far from where we started anyway. In fact, there is an obvious stalemate and, to some extent, even regression and weakening in the opposition! Our task is to reverse the weakening, break the stalemate, galvanize the opposition camp and get things moving again until victory is achieved and the Eritrean people are free. That is why we have not chosen to go back and do what is being suggested above. But, we are prepared to work with any group that shares our ultimate aspiration despite some minor differences which we should be able to accommodate because we know that without unity nothing can be achieved.

Comment: Beautiful: again, OUR VOICE has taken the correct position on the political parties based on direct experience and beyond. We cannot keep on following politicians that ignored our suffering and never contacted us for 16 years of their devastating misrepresentation. Whatever the reasons may be for their total failure in the common project, they have proven that they have no capacity to lead and to unite putting us in this emergency situation. The reason we Eritreans failed in the past correcting them to shape up was because we did not confront them directly for the taboos. They took us so much for granted they could not even communicate with us in person or in writing. No society can afford giving a politician more than 16 years of chance to impact specially in this extremely dangerous situation of ours. Some EDA politicians were openly against the Vacarro movement of unification without any provocation causing its failure one way or another with other pseudo-activists alike: through destructive interference of their members in the committees and absolute silence on the movement. We cannot trust them anymore only can we encourage them to join this opportunity.

In my article Is Wedi Vacarro running his head ahead of his tail? Is he doing things faster than his objective? I responded to a commentator saying that “As a character, the brother has the material and charismatic capacity to change our situation; but tactically appears to be a political adventurer in the fast lane with a lot of voids behind. His movement lacks a concrete road map to Asmara. Nothing is in writing so far and he has not taken the initiative to meet genuine Eritreans for unity as far as my knowledge is concerned.

In so stating, I did remind him during his [DC] speech about these issues [importance of independent mindedness, etc.] as one of the questioners in the event: the fact that all doors have been closed to genuine Eritreans for unity and that we have been segregated from actively participating in the resistance by groups and individuals that tend to monopolize it completely. I seriously warned him to be careful about the committees and that independent minds would better serve the struggle neutrally and expressed my hope for inclusion in his movement. “ Somewhere in the article, I wrote; ”The Vacarroian philosophy of unification may fail as a result of internal sabotage from within the committees if it has not failed yet!!”

One cannot be opinionated and neutral at the same time. The individuals that should serve OUR VOICE’s COUNCIL should then be independent minded (not affiliated to any one of the political parties) to succeed in this strategy. I thus, found their decision not going back to the political parties a very good and correct move based on my belief that it is only the independent mind that can neutrally facilitate the transition of society to democracy absent any form of bias. They cannot play their proclaimed role without being independent of any political group in the resistance. This is therefore a great achievement by the VOICE.

OUR VOICE: ‘Nonetheless, it must be said that what most of the opposition groups have been doing is self defeating. They have been fiercely competing, backbiting and discrediting each other and jockeying for power – although they have nothing in their hands or in sight.  They have to change as soon as possible, or they will be further weakened and rendered irrelevant. We believe in the remarkable ability of humans to change and reform themselves. We, therefore, have not given up on our leaders from the past who are now in the opposition. We hope that they will reform and use their experience, knowledge and wonderful skills to good use. But, they have to look to the future and not the past.”

Comment: Fantastic and strong reminder to them to immediately correct their problems to proceed or to quit or surpassed. This is what they call ASSERTIVE LEADERSHIP that was tragically missing in the resistance including in the Vacarroian movement. SKIFTA is simply destructive in social issues and we need to get rid of it for the sake of our survival and thank you for doing this. As for “We hope that they will reform and use their experience, knowledge and wonderful skills to good use. But, they have to look to the future and not the past”, I believe the visionless politicians should figure out their situation vis-à-vis our people because our patience is exhausted. We have no time to wait for their transformation and for their experience and knowledge to serve our good use only to do what we have to do saving our society from the trap with or without them.

Apparently, things seem to be going very well with OUR VOICE as we can see them coming in as often as they can. Their momentum is flowing smoothly and strongly as a result of their consecutive appearances and progressive development of their mission. I see them qualitatively developing their agenda to feel so excited about the whole thing. I support their view on “The role of opposition political parties and civic organizations in the elections” and I suggest tasks should from now on be executed using project management principles in incremental fashion. I hope the local committees everywhere will try to minimize the workload of the VOICE by initiating the local election process on their own as soon as they can. The VOICE should not take this for granted, however, and must release the printable memorandum that should be accessed on line to be signed by committee leaders and other applicable entities and faxed back in hard copy for the record. So should they appeal to the political parties and any other organized groups to do this as soon as possible! The Eritrean people should certainly finance the cost of the assignments hitherto suggested by the VOICE as soon as support from all activists is confirmed through signed documentation (memorandum). The signature of group leaders indicating their mandate to represent their members and specifying the number of their members should be accounted for data or statistics oriented communication with the international politicians to help in the areas of diplomacy ahead. Through this civilized and scientific approach, and the respective responses of the groups in question we will have the chance to know who is who for democracy and move on to the destination together or separately.

“The Our Voice group is willing to coordinate these processes” should then change to the group will coordinate theses processes in order to avoid procrastination and reluctance from the resistance elements no matter how tedious doing it may be. We should have no excuses to fail on “INFILTRATION” (from the regime and the opposition forces) like many other initiatives including the Vacarroian movement of unification after we structure the chain of command with independent minded individuals.

In conclusion, we feel very optimistic about the situation and let us go for it without hesitation keeping in mind that there appear two major interdependent projects that must simultaneously be performed independently but in parallel: CENTRALIZING the mass organizations into forming the COUNCIL and developing the final SENEDthat asserts the politicians interested in political power to follow for democratic election in the country with international support. The COUNCIL should use the SENED as a guiding strategy to make the society ready for election, checking and balancing the validity of the political parties based on their national programs, approving or disapproving them for election still based on their programs, taking care of the humanitarian and security issues as a transitional government of Eritrea, monitoring the entire process with international observers and transferring office to the elected President of Eritrea to lead the nation under the principles ofConstitutional Secular Democracy. This means the time invested on forming the COUNCIL must be used by the SENED developing group to prepare the SENED for the end of the two projects to synchronize. By the time the COUNCIL is successfully erected, it should have the SENED ready to apply in the process of Presidential election without delay. The COUNCIL cannot replace the dictatorship by a democratically elected government without the SENED and the SENED cannot have any effect in the society without the COUNCIL but either one of them does not have to wait for the completion of the other to start because the two outstanding projects can be and should be developed independently. Both are necessary to completely solve the problem at hand but none of them is necessary for the development of the other.

Finally, I strongly believe that all professionally organized Eritreans have the primary responsibility to enhance this development by becoming the first in offering their solidarity in order to influence the rest of us to that direction. Thank you very much for your transparency and extraordinary effort with great potential to swiftly remove the dictatorship in our country. We are fully behind you and you should be confident about this to continue doing your excellent contribution without interruption. God bless you!