Of Mice and Monkeys

I know I have said this before but I have never meant it as much as I do now… Don’t let anyone tell you poletika Eritra is boring… it is so mind bogglingly complicated that not even an avid follower such as yours truly would dare blink lest one misses all the action. This has specially been the case now that the waEla season is in full swing…

… what I am finding really difficult to fathom is the sheer number of activists that we have… I mean whenever we try to action something like a petition for sanctioning PFDJ, an appeal for attention to the Sinai disasters a letter of outrage against the endless ship wrecks off the Mediterranean. The same 200 people give or take a surprise name signs up… so much so that I was beginning to think I knew every Eritrean activist in the diaspora… the congress has surprised me by the fact that there are nearly six hundred people there and many of the 200 people who have been keeping this thing going are still out here looking in…. I guess I should give credit to the NCDC for bringing people into the world of visible activism… I anticipate a bulge in the number of activists post Awasa 2011.

I wouldn’t be me if I at this point didn’t mention my friend Daniel Tewolde (or soul giver as he is better known in that parallel universe called Paltalk)… and it wouldn’t be fair if I don’t sympathise with his predicament of being left out on the outside too… but it wouldn’t be a reflection of reality if I didn’t say ‘…but I did tell you so..’  . All the people that are now advocating for Daniel are saying the exact same things that they laughed off as ‘procedural tittle-tattle’ last time round…and the time before… you see the big huha that was created in the aftermath of the Brussles conference had the same trademarks and same personalities at its heart… then like now accusations were thrown around … baseless cases were made and votes of no confidence were cast on these cases… and I lost on these votes and resigned from a position that I was elected to unanimously by the same people who two months later found that they had no confidence in my leadership or even the veracity of my convictions to the struggle… the logic in Eritrosphere at the time was to consider the big picture and heed to the logic of meneti mogogo thlef anchewa…and now the same anchewa and the same mogogo pitch up and the same logic seems to be being dangled…well I don’t find mice any more endearing than monkeys… in fact both are positively annoying… so I say deal with the mouse and build another mogogo if need be … we are certainly capable of it!!

Incidentally speaking of monkeys they are eerily quiet these days… I guess they are perplexed by why PFDJ doesn’t want to be a millionaire…(amongst other things). Word on the streets… at least on Meskerem.net is that PFDJ said thanks but no thanks to the EU… really? This is the same PFDJ that doesn’t say ‘no thanks’ to taxing 2% from single mothers on state benefit right? This is also the same PFDJ that had its prized activists call us every loathsome name under the sun, during the Brussels Conference in 2009 that was almost equally loathed by the mice and the monkeys, for attempting to persuade the EU to not let the Government of Eritrea off lightly during their Human Rights Dialogues, if they have to fund them at all…. The months of sheer hard work resulted in the EU commissioners asking difficult questions and last Wednesday hours prior to the scheduled ‘Human Rights Dialogue’ set for Thursday (for which many of us had written briefings and updates) we learnt that the GOE decided to ‘review’ something or another and all projects were frozen… and all Monkeys are still mum on the matter… they can’t claim self reliance on this one… and they wouldn’t admit to anything else so they are silently praying that no one else picks up on the anomaly… the EU is sighing a sigh of relief that they would no longer be embarrassed about the fact that their projects were fuelling slavery… and affirming a ruthless dictator…

There was a brief couple of days ahead of the EU saga when our Monkeys were rather boisterously poised to take to the dance floor singing  ‘Sankshen moyta’ (the sanction is dead!), but naughty Snow-white and her fourteen dwarfs (inner city press came up with this one) seem to have turned this into an unexpected seasonal pantomime for them… when she came out of the woodworks saying ‘no she isn’t!’ last night… it really has been a crap few weeks as far as the monkeys are concerned!

Meanwhile our waEla seems to be moving progressively south… from Addis to Aqaqi and now to Awasa… at this rate the next one will be in Moyale and the other half of CRDiE and EMDHR will not have much to be annoyed about… our only problem then will be how to reset the whole circus northbound! We sure have a long way to go…but we will get there eventually… gradually and having smashed quiet a few mogogos to pieces!

Take care everyone… and safe journey back to the folk in awassa…

Selam

PS
No real mice or moneys were harmed in the writing of this piece…

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