RIP EDA too???

…did anyone else feel that the latest editorial from awate’s pencil kind of missed to take into account a plethora of events… accusations and counter accusations that felt like not just double crossings but in fact quadruple crossings??  When everyone is looking to each other thinking what on earth was all that? The pencil tells us that the long awaited national conference is actually here… well will be here in a few weeks time (about four to be exact!)…

Ok in four weeks time my fellow activists in London will have sorted out their differences and Bereket will return their ‘stolen seats’ and Daniel’s plea will be heard and given due consideration at the Commission… in four weeks time the organisations that asked for the deferment and were subsequently accused of trying to abdicate the objectives of the congress and bar the Eritrean public from attending the congress and taking its place in the leadership structure…will have been reformed and reinstated…or else Bereket and all the others who accused them of this and more will have to apologise profusely to them… somehow get their confidence back and then make sure that these sentiments don’t have lasting implications … all in four weeks…

… oh yeah the folk who asked for the postponement will have to do a lot of explaining as well… particularly those that vehemently argued for the urgent need of the said conference so much so that they split a party and became the centre of a raging fire in the midst of the resistance camp a few months back! Again all that needs to be done in four weeks or less if the commission is then going to unlearn the art of giving people a three day notice to attend a National Conference on a just turn up and see what happens basis! Oh yeah and those who had made arrangements to be in Addis this weekend will have to unmake them and then remake them for four weeks time… unless of course they had listened to Hiruy Tedla Bairu’s call and have just turned up in Addis anyway!

Contrary to what the pencil seems to be saying … this to me isn’t a postponement but a symptom of the rift within the resistance movement… it reminds me of a joke from a long time ago… an Asmarino and an Amiche became best friends (already a recipe for fun and games!)… the Amiche observed that his Asmarino friend had taken to enjoying sumptuous meals at really nice restaurants across town that were well beyond his means… suspecting there was a trick somewhere he implores on his friend to tell him and the friend explains that it was so simple really … ‘I go into a restaurant order their best dish and a chicken soup for starter and always take a dead mouse in my pocket… once the soup is served I put the mouse in it and make an indignant complaint’… the restaurateurs keen to keep it all hush hush offer all sort of amends and appearing cooperative the ‘customer’ claims that all he now wants is to finish his meal in peace and quiet and invariably relieved at the good will of their customer the proprietors were all too happy to offer him the meal for free and even throw in the pudding with tea and coffee to go with it… the goon of an Amiche (a good candidate for YPFDJ) decides that this indeed is a good idea and goes and does the same…. But when he orders his chicken soup the waiter tells him due to an incident last week that soup had been pulled off the menu and so can he please order some other starter… may be a nice salad? The frustrated amiche asks ‘selata dea mo anchwa kemey gere ketwela?’ … I am afraid it feels like too many were jumping on the band wagon of waEla for a free ride with a mouse in their pocket to use it to get their own way… or else!…when push came to shove and it was clear who was actually going to have their way mouse or no mouse, everyone begun shouting out what the other group’s ‘agenda’ has been all along! The noise is really ugly!

…And somehow I know that the authors of the Pencil at awate.com must know that this is no mere ‘postponement’ that may regrettably inconvenience some! The commission needs to answer quiet a few question to quiet a few of its members and then to its coordinating groups and then to the public… the Alliance will need to answer many more to the commission and then to its members and then to the people that it called names when they also asked for a ‘postponement’ and then explain why some in its rank were seen by others as trying to take undue advantage and hold the entire movement hostage....and if awate’s heralding of a National Confrere’s imminent arrival is to be,  all this has to happen in four weeks! (four Eritrean opposition weeks! Fist they let the war on the internet rage, then they begin to organise a meeting then they come back split in more ways than they went in, in the first place!)…I am not holding my breath!

But it is not just awate that seem to be skipping a few pages and rushing to happily ever after of coordination and unity! Other friends seem to have decided that they are going to get us there more expediently and hustle free and Meskerem have dubbed them…’nationalist’ so all must be well… really? How pompous was that declaration of the ‘Formation of Coordinating Committee for Network of Eritrean National Democratic Forces’… maybe the commission and the CCNENDF (doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue does it?), should team up to coordinate the remainder actions in the remaining four weeks and fulfil the wish for a cohesive National Conference (sorry I forgot that they don’t speak much to each other!)…can’t people see that declaring something on the opposite end of the same pole only makes the problem worse?? Has anyone in the Eritrean diaspora politics ever heard of building bridges? The reason the National Conference was unable to achieve much last year is the same reason that a ‘postponement’ was proposed last week and is the same reason why everyone started crying ‘foul’ at the same time and exactly the reason why there needs to always be a new ‘end all’ declaration of the formation of a new body in the making all the time!!! EVERYONE IS SUSPICIOUS OF EVERYONE ELSE!... everyone knows that the other person has a mouse in their pocket and so they are quick to pull off the stuff off the menu! People have been in this game too long, that everyone goes to the date you were born to explain why things are where they are! They have been at it for that long! (wedi fillipo’s article about Amaha was so telling of all that! BTW I have never been given a phone or a sim to talk to Amaha when I was in Addis in 2009… if Aboy Belay had a sim that Amaha used to phone him it is news to me… but I could have told all of you how Mr Amaha Dominico works and wouldn’t have needed to explain his parent’s background to do that!… my experiences in the run up to his election in the coordinating committee for the national conference, his actions post the 2008 EDA meeting…including all the dirt dishing during the Brussels conference…has taught me enough! )…

…gladly all is not lost … there is another group of people who are also calling for unity and coordination… their slogan? Simerrrrrr (mandatory rrrrrrr!!)… they fight PFDJ face to face and reclaiming everything that is Eritrean! They turn up at bars in New York and chase monkeys away!… they organise demos and rally behind a compatriot asking ‘where is my father’ in Giessen ...they are all over the social media giving YPFDJ a run for their banana! They are on the icy streets of Stockholm and Uppsala brimming with Eritrean pride!!   they chase dancing clowns off dance floors in Israel… they disrupt PFDJ meetings and make their own point on what agenda in Leeds! And they are able to do all that because they trust each other! And have total confidence in their objectives: to free Eritrean communities across the globe off the lies and deceit of PFDJ leaving no ground for them to fester…. ready to pay any price and prepared to turn up wherever to make the point that… PFDJ doesn’t represent us!.... neither the new coordinating group nor the National Conference Coordinators are able to coordinate these events as they both carry enough weight to sink a boat and unless they begin to build bridges and begin to unpack some of their baggage, learn to trust others and stop worrying too much about whose name is atop an acronym… the young people will loose all faith in them and they run the risk of making themselves irrelevant…

selam       

{jcomments off}