ERITREA IN CRISIS: THE IMMEDIATE CHALLENGE AND OUR UNITED RESPONSE TO IT! By Our Voice “Our Destiny in Our Hands!” Outline Introduction 1. Tradition, Democracy and the Eritrean Experience 2. The Epicentre of Our Troubles: Isais Afwerki, His Royal Ancestry and Bad Faith 3. The Need for Root and Branch Change to Remove the Criminal Cabal in Asmara 4. The Building of Broad Unity to Encircle and Destroy the Dictatorship 5. The Need for an Armed Wing! 6. Where Do We start and How Do We Do It? 7. Technicality of Organizing the Mass Movement for Political Action 8. Immediate Tasks of the New Leaders of the Opposition Conclusion: On Our Way to Asmara, or Will It Be so Easy? Our Renewed Mission Statement: This far, and no more!! Our mission is to use every legitimate means at our disposal, including military force, to help remove the entire edifice of dictatorship in Eritrea at the earliest and establish democratic constitutional governance. The offices of the bandit regime at Adi Hallo and the entire dictator’s hiding places will be “targeted” as the oppressive system’s centre of gravity. To make all this possible, as a first step, we shall focus with urgency on setting up the proposed Eritrean Local Assemblies and the National Baito which will appoint the Chief Executive and his/her cabinet of experts. The chief executive will effectively spearhead our struggle for justice at a higher level and act as the legitimate representative of the Eritrean people. Introduction Our Voice is back with a really big question! Are we being overtaken by developments? In other words, are we being too late to influence and shape events inside Eritrea? Five recent events lend substance to our query. (a) The granting of 200 million Euros to the dictator by the European Union thus giving the regime an added lease of life, (b) The attempt by the dictator to break out of his encirclement by joining the Islamic Alliance (organized by the Saudis and the Qataris) against the Huthis in Yemen, 1 (c) Herman Cohen’s alarming statement reminding the Habeshas (both Eritreans and Ethiopians) that the Western Red Sea may soon be overtaken by the Arabs and the Sharia Law imposed on the region, (d) The growing frustration in Ethiopia with the Isaias’s regime, and (e) Andrew Korybro’s article: “Saudi Arabia and GCC are Expanding to Eritrea. Geopolitical Implications to Ethiopia”, Global Research, Nov. 18, 2015. About a month ago, there was a general feeling that Isaias personnally and his regime were in their last legs. The picture is now different, and we have started to see a more active and emboldened Isaias Afwerki. Even his exaggerated and devilish moustache appears to be bigger. No doubt, events have been moving faster than us and what we wished them to be. However, we believe that still have a window of opportunity which we must not miss. If we don’t act decisively now, things may change completely, and all our efforts might prove out of date and futile. Therefore, as the Latin aphorism goes: “Carpe diem!” Let’s seize the day and act!! 1. Tradition, Democracy and the Eritrean Experience We need to start with a proper perspective of what underlies our psychology, our perception of ourselves, our expectations and what we do - and more importantly, what we think we can do or not. There is no space here to deal with this subject in full. We can only present a brief summary as a starting point. Traditionally, Eritrea has been a heterogeneous society with various ethnic, linguistic, social, religious, other cultural and political tendencies. In some parts of the country, there were baitos and the Higi Indaba that played important roles in the administration of the community. But, there were also the msleynes mostly appointed by far away rases and kings as their emissaries. Serfdom also existed in western Eritrea even up to the coming of the Italians. In fact, Eritrea was largely a battlefield of competing powers and allegiances that hardly saw any peace for prolonged periods. This necessitated the emergence of strong personalities that held their grounds and defended themselves and their communities. Thus, the best attribute one could give to a person was, “Seb’ay beal sire!” rather than “what a knowledgeable wise man!” May be that is why the “leyti zideretom” (or night watchmen) were given the highest respect when Arba’ite Asmera was formed about 500 years ago to enable the people to defend themselves against bandits, kidnappers and looters. There were also the Bahta Segeneiti, Raisi Wolde-Michael Solomon, etc. This hero worship was Eritrean response to oppression, unfairness, cruelty and exploitation. In short, there has largely been adoration of the strong in the Eritrean culture. We believe that this is the key to understanding why Isaias Afwerki came to the Eritrean stage with so much swagger and some toughness and managed to get so much easy following and hero worship which he did not deserve. People 2 needed a strong defender, a saviour - and Isaias convinced them with so much cunning, skulduggery, harshness and brutal murder of his able competitors that he fitted the profile of the leader that people were craving for. But, it was all a hoax, a make belief. The man was in essence a sadistic narcissist with a sense of entitlement who would do anything to suit himself - a man afflicted with extreme form of selfishness with no bounds, a scheming, pretentious, cruel, corrupt, thieving and self seeking rapist who converted the Massawa palace into a sex den to rape defenceless Eritrean young women in their teens procured for him from the trenches by his generals and colonels to ingratiate their master. This is the much adulated defender of the Eritrean people - the false Messiah, the man who turned a promising country into a nightmare - and brought the hard working, decent and long suffering people of Eritrea to their knees. No doubt, he is the nemesis of Eritrea and the Eritrean people’s - Enemy No. 1. The Eritrean people should, therefore, learn from their experience and never believe what they hear from this man - and his opportunist colleagues who together constitute the criminal cabal in Asmara. All power should be in the hands of the people, and the people should decide what is best for them. This is our essential dispute with Medrek and all similar parties that believe in the top - down political process. We believe that legitimate political power is necessarily based on the grassroots. Political leaders have no legitimacy unless their power comes from the people, and not imposed from above. That is why we salute Amanuel Eyasu of www.assenna.com (the formidable fighter for justice) for his vigorous campaigns to promote grassroots democracy and the transfer of power to the people - away from the self-appointed leaders, some of whom with unsavoury past. It is not that the people should elect their leaders to execute the will of the grassroots once and for all. Most importantly, the people should make sure that they retain their inherent power to appoint and dismiss their leaders according to their performance. Less than that is a recipe for disaster. Human beings are weak!! Unless there are democratic supervisory mechanisms to check on them, they have the tendency to misbehave grossly and try to benefit at the expense of society. V. Lenin said, “Trust is good, but control is better.” How true! There is no bound for the mischief and mass disaster that powerful individuals with no one to control them can bring about. This tendency has quite often resulted in defeat in battles, the loss of independence of countries, the death of millions and the end of civilizations. We can mention many examples for this as the likes of Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Poll-Pot of Cambodia who were grossly delusional mass murderers. But, at least, some of these had high ambitions for their people however unjustified. How about our own home grown adulated “liberator”? The extent of the grief this man has brought to the Eritrean people is beyond belief, and there is no need to rehearse it here yet again. In short, Enemy No. 1 has never had any good intentions for the Eritrean people. It seems that his most important mission has been to humiliate and destroy the country and its people. 3 In his recent radio interview in Vienna, Austria, Yemane Gebreab stated that the size of the population of Eritrea at present is about 3 million (not 6 million as is officially claimed). Isaias Afwerki is accountable for the missing 3 million people which Eritrea should at least have had by now. We have done our own research on the size of the Eritrean population at the moment. We have also studied the demographic structure of Eritrea during the time of the British, the Ethiopian rule and at the time of the referendum. We are also aware of the various secretive censuses carried out by the EPLF/HIGDEF since “independence” but whose outcomes have never been publically announced. In short, what we have found out has really shocked us. Nothing has been going right for Eritrea and Eritreans under this moustachioed bandit. 2. The Epicentre of Our Troubles: Isaias Afwerki, His Royal Ancestry and Bad Faith Long ago when almost everyone was a Marxist or a quasi Marxist, it was believed that economic and social forces were the primary determinants of political change - positive or negative. Personal agents in history were given little importance. With the recent ascent of the field of political psychology, however, it is recognized (cf.