Remark: I take full responsibility for this article that has nothing to do with any group’s opinion thereof and congratulate our people in England for successfully completing the process of electing their representatives in favor of the ultimate goal; Global Leadership of the Eritrean people for democracy.

Reminder: Please watch the very productive interview held by “Eritrean Affair Program” with Professor Araya Debessay at Tempoafricatv.Com to have a clear picture about the GI agenda and the obstacles in the way of freedom from within the resistance against the dictatorship. Well done Professor, and thank you.

From the Forum

K.tewolde: “The movement lacks a true dedicated, selfless, bold, intelligent leader, an Eritrean Martin Luther King who is not afraid to expose himself/herself to the elements of scrutiny, ridicule, including martyrdom in the process, one who can unify us under the banner of ending tyranny in our nation by saying,’ I have a dream! and willing to give up everything to achieve this goal. Lead by example, the young and old will follow, it has been proven time and time again.”

Comment: Yes, we don’t have that kind of a leader but leaders don’t make themselves up out of nothing without the people needless to say we have quiet a few dedicated people like you who can change the situation through the GI community. There were two main choices of struggle for Afro Americans of that era: Malcolm X’s violent and Martin’s peaceful means of resolution and the people’s involvement in the struggle was too solid for racist America to succumb to reality. Martin could not have done it without his people’s direct participation in the movement; nor had had the right to reject Malcolm because of their ideological difference on the method of struggle, and vise versa. They were still working together knowing that the fight was not about personal issues but of the people’s freedom from racism.

Our situation offers, at least two means of struggle: Top-Down and Bottom-up but none of them can succeed with the current weak participation of the people.

What we need to adapt in the absence of a charismatic leader is willingness to listen to each other and opening the mind. We need a healthy relationship without competition on the common agenda to take advantage of each other’s talents. We need the flexibility necessary for unified action without seeking recognition and self-aggrandizement on who we think we were. We need to humble down arresting the ego that stops us from accepting each other without condition. We cannot win personifying the matter to the extent of refusing dialog with other elements of the society that have the same steak in the fight. I have no right to deny any Eritrean his share of the pie believing my way should be the only way for it is not my personal matter and cannot do it without the people. This understanding made Malcolm, Martin, Angela Davis and Black Panters et al. to relate to the struggle with equal respect and cooperation.

Andom: ”No Eritrean is better or less than others. If one believes in bottom-up and another one in top-bottom, let them believe in what they believe. It is not what a few individuals believe that matters but what we the ordinary people believe. without our participation they will have no impact. You should not expect everyone to be on board at once.”

Comment: Well said brother and it is clear that no one wins without the people but it would help a lot opening the mind and transparently communicating with each other in democratic fashion. As you said, the success of our people does not depend on few groups that assume of having mandate to lead the resistance alone. The arrogance of the civic groups in question may elongate the freedom of our people but cannot stop it if we work hard and involve, although unfortunate doing it separately. It is not, thus lack of charismatic leader or ideological difference that is troublesome in our case but lack of wisdom finding a hybrid solution that satisfies both sides through willingness to unconditionally discuss the common agenda leaving personal issues aside.

Eyob: ”Isaias is as slow as a turtle when it comes to nation development and implementation of fair governance, however, as fast as a rabbit to dissolve any unity which he sees as a trait to his tight grip of power. He works very hard to avoid any hole that could lead to an end of his era. Therefore, justice seekers need to outrun the tyrant to end the suffering of our oppressed people. Comment: people.”

Comment: The dictator’s obvious effort to disrupt our unity moving at the speed of light or a rabbit is constant but there is no excuse for us to fail as a result, unless we were in his payroll. He is justified defending his autocracy by any means necessary but we are responsible for the division more than his effect on the matter.

Folks; veracity asserts that there is always something to learn from anyone that comes across our lives if we open our minds as much as possible. So was my experience when someone exposed me to something I did not know in the past in brief contact related to what I am doing at this stage of my life. And here I am discussing it after slight modification to reflect the objective reality of the Eritrean people deprived of freedom not only by the disgusting dictatorship but also by the extra ordinary arrogance of our political leaders and civic groups that lack humility and compassion to either find on their own or welcome an inclusive global solution via dialogue and transparency.

Halofom: “Yeah it is time to voice our feeling and take the leadership. I do not mean to exclude our heroes (older ones) but taking responsibilities and showing our talents. I also support Prof Araya’s comment.”
Comment: Well, supporting an idea alone will not make it for us without active involvement to make a difference together.

“Bloom’s Taxonomy was created in 1956 under the leadership of educational psychologist Dr. Benjamin Bloom in order to promote higher forms of thinking in education, such as analyzing and evaluating concepts, processes, procedures, and principles, rather than just remembering facts (rote learning). It is most often used when designing educational, training, and learning processes.”

Acknowledging that experience is education and everything is a learning process by which a given problem finds a solution through trial and error, I feel productive sharing this theory hoping it will better magnetize us to the concrete reality of the resistance at hand.

There are few domains associated with the process of learning according to the theory:

Understanding: In any adversity, people need to understand a problem before designing its solution. In our situation, we all understand the condition of our people under the dictatorship, the reason we have been challenging it for democracy to prevail in the country.

Applying: Once people get familiar with a problem, they apply something that they think of as a solution. In our case, understanding the problem of our people forced us to entertain different ways of solution grouped in different activist entities within our communities. We went through very long experimentation process believing our ways were the only remedy to the common problem, the reason we have more than 30 political parties and tens of civic groups approaching it in their own different ways, despite the constant concept of freedom and democracy. We thought of violently or peacefully changing the situation. Few of us believed in compromising with the dictator as the best solution to the problem. A chunk of us only went for dislodging him in spite of the uncertain result and some of us depended on genuine democracy as the best choice in future Eritrea. The dictatorship being the common element here quiet a few of us theoretically accepted democracy while simultaneously practicing dictatorship and most of us tried to resolve the issue with our arrogance, obstinacy and bias intact.

Analyzing: Separating material or concepts into component parts so that its organizational structure may be understood. Distinguishes between facts and inferences.

It is after failing to resolve the problem through separate means of solution that we should analyze the situation inside out. It is in this stage that we should figure out the problem/s within the vigorously tried solutions. Why did not we solve the problem this long into the resistance? What went wrong within the applied methods that failed to answer the Eritrean people’s call for freedom and justice?

Analysis suggests that the cumulative curse of division, bias, obstinacy, arrogance, dictatorial tendencies and lack of strategy stood in the way of successfully rectifying the problem.

Evaluating: Make judgments about the value of ideas or materials. Key Words: appraises, compares, concludes, contrasts, criticizes, critiques, defends, describes, discriminates, evaluates, explains, interprets, justifies, relates, summarizes, supports

Here is where people should evaluate their situation and stop something that has not worked in favor of other methods using the lesson acquired from their history of failure. Any considered solution should then be free of the obstacles analyzed in the previous stage. If our problems were arrogance, division, bias, obstinacy, dictatorial mindset and lack of strategy; humility, unity, fairness, resilience, democratic spirit and strategy should then be adapted instead. What is being done now is evaluating the failed methods of fighting after critically analyzing them.

Creating: People should then be able to practically produce the solutions through the process of creativity. At this point in the process, we should be clear that the Eritrean people as a unit equally suffer the cumulative problem and carry equal responsibility rectifying it at equal significance without any tendency to dictate other activists in the pool. We should accept that we have been pushing each other away in the process of separately pushing the regime allowing it to survive without formidable contender. We should then come up with practical means of humility, unity, fairness, flexibility and democratic spirit, and of course a potent strategy to neutralize the problem once and for all. We cannot solve it without healthy compromise; and humility can help us get there. No Eritrean is better than another and none of us has the right to solve the problem alone without listening to each other; and acceptance, resilience, democratic mindedness and wisdom will do this for us. We need to equally respect each other despite our ethnic and religious differences; and freedom from prejudice or fairness will accomplish this for us.

What happens when people refuse to change a situation sticking to their routine practice of following something that does not work?

I think they become victims of monotony. They run out of steam after doing the same thing again and again and their importance diminishes to a point where they lack the drive to stay active by entertaining new ideas and exciting their objectives. They get bored and disappear from the scene for a long time. As time goes by, they even stop their routine activities popping up once in a while for the heck of presence because they have nothing new to offer. The frequency of meetings and literal appearances gradually decrease until they melt out of relevance at a point in the journey. The reason we no longer hear from some of our politicians and civic groups is because they cannot continue in the same road without creativity and encouraging output as a result of this syndrome. They don’t have the motivation necessary for more effort, no energy left to pursue the redundant cycle of stillness.

How long does it take for people to realize something is not working and what does it need to wake them up to higher level of consciousness?

Denial is one of the tragedies in human life as we can see from the dictator who lived attaching excuses to any problem in the country without any framework of transformation. With a little help from arrogance, it could be a done deal forever. I think this depends on how people openly face reality minus self-deception. Similar to a chronic drug addict in denial instead of admitting the problem and seeking help before it gets too late, it can take a very long time for those who refuse to accept reality and may not even recover depending on how promptly they confront themselves in view of spirituality. One has to be frank with oneself and fearlessly admit mistakes to exit from the vicious cycle of mental impotence but this has a lot to do with the level ANNINET within the person. In short, one needs to face the self vis-à-vis ego trip to see the light, ever-remains in darkness, otherwise. The reason some of our civic groups and political party leaders remained this long without any activities is because of extreme dissatisfaction and uselessness associated with this syndrome.

The truth remains that we all synchronized up to the first and second stages of the process by which a problem is handled. We understood the problem and we applied our own ways to resolve it separately. But this did not work no matter how long we stayed in the fight. If division and lack of global strategy were the solution, we should have already resolved the problem. The international community would by now have acknowledged us assisting the resistance and providing funds to help our desperate refugees looking for the next bite in the mean streets of the world. Our irrational approach, however, did not cut it for us and nobody wants to give us the chance as such.

While some of us clearly analyzed and evaluated our problem as to what else to do resolving it, some others could not even get there spinning around the old ways of struggle that only produced stillness and intensified suffering of the people. We got fixated on the same failed venues for such a long time and could not overcome the bondage because of many reasons beyond this project. We kept on closing the mind from exploring other venues of success because of arrogance and rigidity needless saying sheer lack of innovation and addiction to stillness.Obvious is that you don’t dwell on a problem with the same approach that failed to produce the expected result unless you give up exciting your life by productivity, obvious saying crisis is the mother of transformation and we are still there because of denial.

I believe our civic group leaders, the humanitarian groups and the political parties that could not transform to the next level of political confrontation have been stack in the application stage of the framework without analyzing and evaluating their ineffective methods of resistance. The fact that they continue applying the same method of struggle year after year despite the same result is the proof to the hypothesis. Their creativity could not travel beyond organizing demonstrations that cannot solve the problem alone for they are only reflections of the society’s resentment with the regime that stop at grievance point of the relationship. They cannot serve us as bridge of connection with the global crowd without unity and written strategy to democracy. At the end of the day, they wasted too many years indirectly helping the regime’s survival, remaining useless to the society and inexistent in view of the international community, although their intention was remarkable.

In contrast, GI and our forces of unity in Europe left the defective way of struggle learning from experience and taking the struggle to the next point of confrontation. GI was born to radiate a new concept of inclusive struggle with clear strategy through the creative aspect of the process after effectively analyzing and evaluating our situation. It created something that can resolve the problem overcoming the curse of bias, rigidity, division and arrogance with transparent vision for all of us to support into the final goal of democratizing Eritrea. The people should now be responsible to develop the global movement through participation and genuine dedication without waiting for someone to do it or watching it from distance in order to earn international respect and recognition.

In conclusion, some people think the dictator was too ill to last long and everything shall be okay after his departure. In my opinion, he will outlast many of us in his comfort zone with no challenger in sight. Let your action do the job instead of your fantasy for you cannot depend on the enemy’s weak point in your imagination when you have a better choice depending on your sanity and practical experience. Neither can you get there with your turtle-walk nor do you have anymore excuse dreaming of success without input for we have the solution that can hike the mountain with your support. Our insignificant method of struggle was justified before the birth of GI, but we cannot be observers now when we can be practical activists for Global Leadership.

Araya Debessay: “Please support the Global Initiative to Empower Eritrean Grassroots movement, by joining it in your respective locality. Be sure to participate in electing your local leaders. This is the first step in the process of electing country-wide leaders who will then elect legitimate Global Leaders. The Global Leaders will then prepare an effective strategy in collaboration with the opposition parties and groups, and forces of change inside the country, to bring an end to dictatorship in our country, and end the suffering of our people.”