A note to ENCDC: how not to conclude the congress underway!

A note to ENCDC: how not to conclude the congress underway!

Apparently the Eritrean National Congress for Democratic Change is convening in Ethiopia as we speak… you will be forgiven for not knowing its existence, its accomplishments to date… or its objectives for the future… our ENCDC is a bit like the things that go bump by night…. noisy, full of innuendos, riddled with rumours and scandals and then when you switch the light on you see nothing! 

And so despite a thriving plethora of media outlets at its disposal… the ENCDC and its ongoing congress have so far grabbed no headlines. There was no discussion on the potential agenda items … there are no groups anxiously awaiting to see signs of progress on their respective concerns and there is no list of issues that would find resolutions or directives as a result of this congress… in short if Members of the Baito decided to lock the hall and sleep for three days and come out and tell us ‘bAwet tezazimu’ no one would bat an eyelid…I think the theme of the conference should be ‘Commiting to Venture nothing in order to gain nothing !’…

… awwww I feel awful now! Maybe I have been unnecessarily harsh on the good people of the waEla and the poor people that are hosting them out of some poor person’s taxes somewhere! But I can’t help being so sceptical about the whole thing! It is a learnt reaction from a whole decade of meetings that are declared ‘bAwet tezazimu’ only for it to produce nothing but the opposite of every last one of the slogans it convened under!…

… maybe the ENCDC should do something different this time like:

Write a series of ‘how not to guides’

how not to conduct a national congress that creates a lot of smoke where there is no fire…

…. How not to deal with a young lone protestor… when you say your are encouraging the full participation of young people in the affairs of their country… with a special section designated to: how not to set up a sub commission that looked into the matter and reported back to the commission for its recommendations to totally be ignored!

how not to write a road map to nowhere is another ‘how to not to that ENCDC could write…especially how not to make it so long and tedious that no one bothers to read it apart from the people who wrote it… with particular emphasis on how not to end up with editorial discrepancies between editions in the different languages 

Or how not to draft a constitution for non constituents… with a dedicated section on how to avoid the embarrassment of total rejection at a conference organise to unveil the constitution…

Perhaps one on: how not to set up virtual organisations made up of inexistent people and dupe your own movement into believing in phantoms… this one should come complete with a how not to guidance on setting up youth and women organisations for the aforementioned phantom organisations…

Alternatively the ENCDC could run a competition for the most creative acronym for a group that doesn’t involve and E or a D… I think ‘ginbar adebo’ would win hands down!  but a bit of healthy competition as we all change our acronyms to win that coveted accolade would keep the movement animated for a good few months… and letting the creative juices run will be a breath of fresh air and hopefully by the end of all that we would not struggle to differentiate between the poor acronyms…    

… To be taken seriously the Baito has to… sort out the situation with EDA… look into its own structures and the ever sprouting parallel structures… such as EYSNS… it will have to take note of the deteriorating situation inside the country and put forth believable recommendations… it will at the very least need to demonstrate its hands-on approach to the refugee crisis and put forth a plausible strategy for supporting the youngsters caught in the unending misery of being born Eritrean… and that is a incredibly gigantic order that would daunt any organisation and much less one that is riddled with baggage going back to zeben eni eni…however anything short and  ENCDC shouldn’t be allowed  to use the words ‘bAwet’ and ‘tezazimu’ in the same sentence of the concluding remarks!

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