Layman’s View on the National Conference

Despite the energetic campaign and the significance attached to the upcoming National Conference for Democratic Change (NCDC), the vast majority of Eritreans in Diaspora remain oblivious to this event.

Any casual follower of Diaspora Eritrean politics will be hard pressed to learn about the NCDC without digging deep into the archives of the various opposition websites, and then stitch together a fuzzy picture what this conference is about. Eritrean Democratic Alliance’s (EDA) official website www.erit-alliance.com doesn’t even link to external websites dedicated to the NCDC maintained by a couple of opposition websites.

After much digging, one is directed to NCDC website maintained by asmarino.com as being most informative. The video section contains some valuable information regarding the conference. Aside from the videos, it is difficult to find articles dedicated to thorough discussion of the conference. Half of the few articles written on this conference are compliments of one active organizer of the conference, Mr. Fisseha Nair.

Examining the articles and videos contained in these websites, and in general, the problem with Eritrean meetings of any kind is that it is customary for participants to dwell on the obvious problems and issues. Valuable time is wasted telling stories on issues we all agree. It is a challenge to identify and prioritize challenges, brainstorm every possible solution and then decide the most viable option. As the saying goes, “the devil is in the detail”, and as Eritreans we either avoid or do not have the skills to refine and iron out details. One problem with Eritreans is that we want to state the obvious because it is a comfort zone knowing that people will nod in agreement, which is regarded as an acknowledgement of one’s wisdom. We have acceptance-philia!

The other shortcoming we have is that even a single failure is regarded as irreversible or as fatal. Hence, we avoid any kind of planning and performance measurements, without which our best efforts are doomed to fail. Just as PFDJ won’t give us its detailed five-year plan for our country, the opposition won’t tell us what their detailed plans are, lest they be judged against what they claimed they would do. After all, what you don’t say won’t come back to hound you.

This writer hopes that the ‘substantial’ EDA EC leadership doesn’t just pat itself in the back for ‘job-well’ done and go to sleep after this conference as they have done for the last 10-years. Organizing a ten-day conference is one thing, but turning an organization into a 365-day a year active machinery based on pre-formulated action plan is another. Judging by past performances, the odds are stacked in favor of the future being very much like the past. Equally, EDA EC shouldn’t view this conference as a point of salvation for its failure in the past. Ideally, strength should be built on strength, not on weakness.

It is against this background that this writer will examine the upcoming National Conference for Democratic Change.

1) What is the purpose of this National Conference for Democratic Change?

The purpose of NCDC is to bring political, civic societies and other active segments of our society and individuals under one umbrella to bring about political change in Eritrea. There are various opinions on what the relationships among these diverse groups should look like at the end of this conference. Will these groups form loose relationships or will they form a closely integrated organizational structure, hence losing a degree of individual independence?

2) Are the specific purposes included in NCDC communiqués and its advocates’ cyber-articles attainable?

At the risk of being an old armchair critic, there are two key questions NCDC (and Eritrean Democratic Alliance (EDA)) must address. The first reason given for proceeding with the conference is to reinvigorate the struggle to bring about change. We are told, by the very same people who are representing EDA and organizing the NCDC, that EDA has been ineffective to bring about change and hence the need for NCDC. This raises further question,

 

• Is EDA ineffective because of organizational issues? If so, would bringing more organizations and individuals allow these organizational issues to be tackled, or would it complicate existing organizational challenges?
• Wouldn’t it make more sense for EDA to undertake an independent, public and thorough self-evaluation of its performance for the last five years (or even last 10 years) with the view of drawing up lessons learned and to systematically address performance gaps before expanding its mandate under the guise of NCDC? Honest and thorough self-evaluation, preferably periodic, should be conducted by the broader opposition movement too.
• Wouldn’t it make more sense to build our organizations block-by-block, ensuring that they are resting on solid footing? In many cases, organizations expand haphazardly for the sake of expanding because its leaders feel that they must show immediate results. Synergy and feasibility are thrown out the window for the purpose of showmanship. Unfortunately, these organizations remain lethargic for years or collapse soon after.
• Would adding more organizations, esp. civic societies and individuals, allow existing wide gaps in political stance among the various political groups to narrow? That is, if political organizations have entrenched views, adding more participants may only add yet another dimension to the existing gap.

The last five years of EDA are the lost years. But failure is the best teacher if we are honest about it, and learn from it. National Conference is not necessarily needed to bring about collaboration among the various organizations and individuals opposed to the PIA regime. The opposition camp continues to lack two critical ingredients, leadership and focus. If our opposition political leadership remains weak, would bringing in civic societies and other active organizations and individuals change this? Our opposition political leadership have shown their tenacity to hang on to power, but unfortunately not the same tenacity for results.

The second factor bogging down the opposition camp is weak focus. Every opposition individual and group wants 32-flavors of Baskin Robin ice-cream. Unfortunately, removing the regime is just one flavor. No agreement can be reached and no collaboration among opposition camp can exist if we continue to throw every agenda on the table. Although the underlying principle of EDA is to put aside the major differences among the various political organizations and work on their basic and common goals, in reality, the opposition camp continues to pursue its complicated agenda behind the scenes, hence the continued failure of EDA.

Instead, if the opposition camp had organized itself with the sole purpose of removing the regime without complicating its agenda, our message would have been simple to the general public, our actions coordinated and thus delivering effective results.

Yet another issue is the method of struggle. The current loose relationships among the political organizations have allowed some of these political parties to claim to pursue peaceful resistance while others to claim to pursue armed struggle without exposing significant contradiction within EDA. However the question is, the closer the relationship between political organizations and civic societies, would civic societies’ mandates allow them, esp. for humanitarian organizations, to openly or tacitly condone for violence as means of effecting change? Would civic societies, esp. humanitarian ones, have moral obligation to pursue their objectives through unwavering humanitarian principles than through flaky political calculations? Would EDA and ECDC modify its strategy based on the input of the civic societies?

3) Is PCDC/ECDC inclusive?

Advocates of ECDC tell us that the purpose of national conference is to bring together various groups and individuals who share the principles of democracy under one umbrella. Based on internet news, EPDP has withdrawn from the conference, and other organizations such as CDRiE, EMDHR and other opposition groups may not have applied or have been declined from participating in the conference. I will not hazard to guess what the rift is but EPDP has complained about the process.

The biggest challenge for an armchair critic such as this writer is that there is a serious transparency gap in the opposition camp – without exception of opposition parties. We are told bits and pieces of the story. As valiant as the Eritrean cyber-media has been, they still remain blogging sites rather than a source of independent journalistic reporting. Although every individual has his/her political bias, journalism requires a struggle to free oneself from the biases and political intrigues (even those political intrigues aimed at journalists to throw them off their duties) and remain focussed on the task of investigative journalism. Although we are continuously told that the three branches of government ensure democracy, it is proven that it is the fourth pillar of democracy, i.e. independent and investigative journalism or independent media establishments, that has brought the West into the world of increased transparency when dealing with domestic issues (as opposed to foreign issues). Unfortunately, the vast majority of our cyber media remain advocates of specific views and groups than as independent investigative journalists dedicated to holding all the political and interested groups to higher standards.

The Preparatory Committee of National Conference (PCNC), and EDA as its sponsor, should have made public its criteria in selecting the participants in the conference. If it is transparency and accountability that will get us to our ultimate aim of attaining and maintaining a democratic society, then EDA and PCNC must begin their journey by becoming transparent and accountable today. Those who have excuses for withholding information today will have the same excuses tomorrow. If the upcoming and subsequent conferences are to become the building blocks for the future democratic Eritrea, transparency and accountability should become the bedrock foundation of that aspiration. EDA/PCNC should divulge all the applicants to this conference and the criteria used to accept or reject their participation in the conference. Equally important is to publicly list all the papers submitted to PCNC and the criteria used to accept or reject them. One step further would be to publish on cyberspace, with the writers’ permissions, all the papers that were rejected from being presented at the conference. Just to close the loophole, EDA/PCDC should still publish a list of all the titles and authors of all the papers presented to it regardless of whether the authors agree to its publication, and indicate why certain papers were rejected. It is a lot of work, but again, democracy is a lot of work. EDA/PCNC should publicize all the above within two months of the end of the conference. Any delay should be regarded as PFDJ-style absence of transparency.

Inclusiveness is about tolerating differing views. Those who espouse more independent system of government for various groups should be tolerated as those who leave open the idea of reconciliation with the PIA regime. No one has the ultimate authority to filter and define what is acceptable and unacceptable except those views which do not abide by the principles of democracy and espouse violence as a means to bring about change.

Some EDA leaders have been dismissive about possible dialogue with the regime. Although the PIA regime has been intransigent in its dealing with its opposition, its behaviour is becoming more predictable. PIA had been so dismissive about the UN sanction and the ‘non-existence’ of the conflict with Djibouti one would have been excused if one believed that he would never succumb to pressure. Not so! In reality, PIA has tendency to quickly succumb to pressure as happened with the Qatari-Djibouti deal, the American-Rwandan proposals and even in his dealings with his own clique until he found his escape routes. The other interesting question is, is EDA leadership reluctant to pursue ‘reconciliation’ with PIA or with the PIA regime. If recent history is any indication, dictators have long life as manifested in China, Soviet Union/Russia, Cuba, N. Korea, Burma (Myanmar) and Zimbabwe. Change has been effected through the natural process only!

4) The role of NCDC in formulating post-PFDJ Eritrea?

The other main objective of the upcoming NCDC is to reach a consensus, or is it ‘substantial’ consensus as it has been redefined, on post-PFDJ Eritrea. Although there is varying understanding of the life-span and growth of NCDC, it is generally agreed that the upcoming NCDC is only the beginning of a dialogue among the broad opposition camp. NCDC is expected to convene from time-to-time to include new groups and organizations and, eventually, domestic forces in post-PFDJ Eritrea.

Examining the July 8/2009 recommendation of the Study Group mandated by EDA EC¹, there is no explicit indication of allowing domestic forces to join the post-PFDJ transitional government. This study mentions democratic parties and organizations forming the transitional government, and Diaspora organization groups [under Section 3.2 transitional government of the above study document] as the sole participants in the transitional government. This writer hopes that this is an honest error, which remains uncorrected for a year. It would take a child to know that there can’t be democratic parties and organizations in PFDJ Eritrea, and as such the recommendations contained in the July 8/2009 report is aimed at excluding the primary stakeholders in post-PFDJ Eritrea, i.e. the residents of Eritrea, outside the political process, yet we blame PFDJ for being exclusionary.

In fact, if this writer had his way, I would include Diaspora political groups in minor but important role as facilitators of both transitional government and, more importantly, the national conference to be held in Eritrea. All the decision makers of the future Eritrea should be gathered from within the various local inhabitants of the country. This writer remains unconvinced that Diaspora opposition has good grasp of the local Eritrean issues, and that their participation would only manage to complicate issues by injecting their fuzzy politics shaped by politics of yesteryears and CNN/Al-Jazeera. If we define Eritrean politics by the challenges of Temple Mount, we have lost before we even begin.

Although the July 8/2009 study contains many positive recommendations, higher priority issues are lost in the long list of recommendations. As this author has advocated for years, in order to speed up change, our primary message should be (not necessarily in any order) as follows,

• Vigorously campaign to reach out to tegadelties because they hold the key to change in Eritrea. The opposition camp can only cripple PIA by pulling the rug underneath him, and that can only be done by reaching out primarily to tegadelties at all levels of government and military. The opposition camp has to come out with a clear and LOUD message telling tegadelties that they are as much victims of this ruthless regime. The opposition camp must pledge, if they would ever believe you, to respect their rights and desires to lead a decent life. After all, the vast majority deserve it.
• Vigorously campaign to reach out to young Eritreans in Eritrea because they are the future of Eritrea. Sec. 3.4.4 of the study indicates that EDA intends to continue with national service. This is untenable! It is important that the right message is sent out to young Eritreans based on realistic study of their apprehensions, concerns and fears. Wishful thinking from abroad will only lead to continuous crisis management attempting to extinguish bush fires than concentrating on the arduous task of building a nation.
• There must be a realistic plan to repatriate and settle Eritrean refugees and internally displaced Eritreans and equally vigorous campaign to win their support.

The July 8/2010 contains more hodgepodge issues based on emotional analysis than based on thorough discussions. For instance, the whole discussion pertaining civil service and nationalizing PFDJ business entities show lack of thorough analysis. I will leave this topic for another time.

5) The challenges of consensus-building

At least we have gotten to the point of mapping out the various shades of consensus – from ‘full’ consensus to ‘substantial’ consensus. Next we will be told of ‘satisfactory’ consensus! Consensus-building isn’t about formulating hodgepodge solutions designed to please everyone but ends up becoming irrelevant to everyone. Consensus-building isn’t about forging together a political platform based on conflicting positions. This is simply leaving conflicts for another day.

One such example is the contradictory messages contained in the same EDA Study Group recommendation, Sec. 3.3.13 against Sec. 3.4.2. The first section suggests a witch-hunt against the regime members while the second section suggests reconciliation. These contradictory messages are designed to please opposing views within the opposition camp. It is called pick-and-choose recommendation as needed for particular situation. It won’t work! This is similar to the debates of South African-style “Truth & Reconciliation” vs. “Debaathification” approach to addressing national wounds.

How does one reach consensus? There will be hundreds of participants who parachute from around the world with meeting agendas given to them (I am guessing here) on the first day of the upcoming conference. There must an agenda, unless it is just good old party time. During the ten-day conference, participants will be broken up into working groups and their views collected to arrive at recommendations. But the following questions must be examined,

• If the purpose is to generate recommendations quickly without thorough debates then such 10-day conference with its workshops may indeed generate hodgepodge recommendations. But a thorough debate requires more than chunks of one-hour workshops dwelling on tons of topics. If discussions are limited to short periods, participants will only attempt to impose their individual views rather than listening to alternative views. This will only entrench views and create further gaps within the opposition. The best forum for prolonged and thorough discussions remains cyber-space. The main purpose of any conference should be for networking rather than for thorough debates (due to time constraints). The mechanism for building consensus is changing with the advent of technology.
• We are told that the agenda and goal of the conference shouldn’t be pre-determined because it would prejudice against the majority of the participants. In reality, at the end of the conference, EDA and PCNC will have to determine what to take away from this conference.

   

  1. Is EDA going to tell us that this was just a discussion event designed to gauge the prevailing views the participants? Would this mean that there would be no recommendations emanating from this conference?
  2. If there are going to be recommendations, would EDA/PCNC tell us how they arrived at these recommendations? Would these recommendations contain contradictory views in order to please everyone? As stated earlier, there are no reliable and verifiable mechanisms for ensuring that the declared or stated recommendations indeed emanated from the general discussions that took place in the workshops. In reality, many recommendations are massaged by select groups from within the inner circle of an organization’s leadership to suit their message.

  The next question is, assuming that there will be ‘recommendations’ emanating from this conference, does EDA EC have the capacity to turn these recommendations, however flawed they may be, into plan-of-action? Past experience shows that EDA has utterly failed in formulating even the simplest plan-of-action. Organizing a ten-day conference is one thing, but turning an organization into a 365-day a year active machinery based on pre-formulated action plan is another. In other words, discussions and debates should give adequate attention to turning ‘static’ consensus into ‘dynamically’ building consensus able to achieve results? In reality, we are poor in discussing the mechanics of processes and consensus building, instead dwelling on discussing problems we all agree and where everybody just nods their heads. In few cases, we will be stuck in workshops with people whose idea of deep discussions is [one-way] monologue.

As an outsider looking in, this writer would be more interested on how EDA/PCNC attempts to arrive at consensus. It is the process that is more important than the recommendations and communiqués. If EDA is seen to falter in the current process, this bodes ill for handling an even more complex process required in building consensus in post-PFDJ Eritrea. Dismissive attitudes only grow amid complex challenges, while ‘substantial’ consensus is slowly reduced to ‘satisfactory’ consensus. It is indeed a slippery road.

6) Continuity planning

Would participants discuss continuity planning, esp. seriously address the issue of passing down the leadership baton to younger generation. Without any concrete steps taken today, we will have the same groups of individuals who have in power as long as PIA leading the charge in the future. There can’t be injection of new ideas and vigour without involving the younger generation. What concrete steps has EDA done in the last ten years to involve the young generation (and women at that) not only as members but also at the leadership level?

Last thoughts

The question is whether EPDP should abide by the principle of engagement regardless of the rift with the opposing side. The principle of engagement is important in maintaining open communication line with least amount of noise, ensuring reciprocity when the other side is in the same as you at later date, and in ensuring that the opposing side doesn’t stride too far from common position if no mitigating factors exist.

At the same time, there comes a time when one must draw a line in the sand. Every political organization has its own strategy to achieve its aims. Where collective strategies drift further away from one’s own, and where one is convinced that the collective strategy won’t achieve the ultimate aim, one is then obligated to disengage and pursue one’s own strategy. At this juncture in the struggle, groups that espouse a more nationalist vision can only advocate for democratic resolution of domestic political challenges, BUT CAN NOT adopt or even be perceived as adopting everybody’s conflicting agenda as their own political position. The current struggle can only succeed with simple message and any cluttering of our simple message will prolong our misery. The people of Eritrea themselves, those living in its belly, can decide any arrangement [dynamic one at that] they wish based on their own assessments of their situation, and NOT by those who intend to import other people’s problems and agenda to our country. We can help them but we can’t become a substitute!

It is dangerous politics when one disillusions oneself into pursuing the principles of ‘shock doctrine’, i.e. crisis is viewed as a golden opportunity to implement otherwise unpopular and, even worse, untested theories, to advance one’s agenda. Trying to hit two birds with one stone gets you no bird at all! Gradual change based on common principles and clear milestones is the best guarantor of arriving at our destination.

Much can be said but I will leave the rest for future discussions. It is suffice to say, substance should be more important than form. This should have been the ‘Coalition of the Prudent’ than the ‘Coalition of the Willing’!

[As I was preparing to post this article, EPDP posted an article on the same issue on its website. I will leave this to my next discussion]

Berhan Hagos

July 12, 2010