Unexpected item in bagging area…

Unexpected item in bagging area…

… This morning I spent a good couple of minutes fighting the self-checkout counter at a supermarket, trying to convince it, that there were really no ‘unexpected items’ I had scanned the entire content of the basket and put it in the bagging area as per usual. Just when I was about to lose my cool, I realised it was the freebie magazine I picked up to flick through, as waited for a free checkout counter that had caused the machine to freak out!

The difference made by the slightest of unpredictability on a system that is based in complete match between the weight of items scanned and that which then appears on the other side…a system at its best…

…I didn’t see that coming…

Despite the fact that a lot happens in our Resistance movement much of it leaves the system itself confused because no one is clear as to where the actions, engagements and initiatives come or whence they then go… there is no introduction, there is no logical sequence of events and there certainly is no connectivity with what the rest of the system is doing…

If I had half the impudence I am often accused of having… this piece would be called: ‘MedreK a dialogue forum minus the dialogue’…ughhhh…I guess there is still  a bit of a crowd-pleaser left in me…

… back to Medrek…

Here, I will admit that I know almost nothing about their activities other than what is publicly available… I live and have been an activist in London since 2001 and am aware of the fact that Medrek are based here in London too, but there hasn’t been any introduction or any public consultation with members of the wider movement based in London. This will not have been a problem if the whole point of the initiative was to provide forum for dialogue (I presume it is across forces fighting for democracy and justice in Eritrea)… over the last few months there were several activities that were open to many London based activists: in December we had an event launching a report on trafficking, in January there was the wedi vaccaro meeting with unprecedented attendance, and then there was the former fighters New Year event, there were also two commemorative events (a seminar and a rally) on the anniversary of Forto2013… Medrek’s launch and their consultative meetings, since spring 2013, were neither advertised nor discussed at any of the above… I am not sure what criteria Medrek is using for engaging activists but I doubt it is a record of sustained activism against pfdj… hence many activists have been voicing their concerns amounting to: we don’t know where they are taking this! It is a totally unexpected addition… at best people worry that the whole engagement will be another well intentioned initiative that seemed good at the time… at worst a sinister ploy to have a finger in the pie in response to the fast changing terrain… either way something doesn’t quiet add up.

Listening to the radio broadcast of the launch event…in an answer to one of the questions, one of the speakers said, that Medrek emerged out of an assessment of the opposition movement and its achievements (non-achievement to be precise) over the last… was it ten or twenty years?… as a very vocal and active , activist for over ten of the twenty years, I guess a lot of that assessment involves the activities and initiatives that, I and  many of fellow activist, who joined the resistance in the post 2001 days, were engaged in.  However the said assessment sounds more like a sort of a desk-based, judgement against our activities , as opposed to a root-and –branch assessment in consultation with ourselves. I don’t recall anyone being consulted over the scope of the assessment or its findings, before Medrek embarked on their elaborate and well resources project… hence I am thinking… Unexpected item in bagging area!

… I am also thinking haven’t we been here before? Didn’t we have the Berlin initiative that came and went? Didn’t the EDP come out of the post 2001 developments with a lot of promises and much prospect, only to take us on a  that regrettable roller-coaster ride that left many with an unpleasant tummy-churn? What is pioneering, innovative and ground-breaking this time? If the ‘assessment’ of the opposition movement told of its ineffectiveness and the personalities that make up Medrek have been part of the fabric that makes the ineffective movement, isn’t this kind of prescribing the ailment as the cure? Here … I am not saying the personalities that make up Medrek are the illness, what I am saying is: a system is interconnected and a cure concocted in isolation following a sequestered assessment isn’t going to work… and if the said cure comes with resources attached it will at best be an expensive placebo…at worse another addition to the litany of unworkable solutions we tried to ram down each other’s throats…

This ought to be… as the ‘National Conference’ ought to have been a collaborative effort from start to finish,  with a clearly laid out process that leaves no room for unexpected items down the other end…

What we need is a sustainable popular movement, what it takes is dogged determination to develop the grassroots …and that will only ever happen when the grassroots are able to trust those mobilising them …

As I was writing this article (in my head) I learnt that EDA had their own unexpected item in bagging area too… a unity meeting in Ethiopia… Hadninetawi Akeba… no less…! I don’t remember an announcement of the meeting nor does the concluding statement relate anything about what the scope and the direction of the exercise was… what the processes leading up to it were, nor what to expect next…

There is nothing to say that the two processes have the intention of ever coming together to dialogue… bitter near past experience indicates they will remain in their respective parallel universes adversarialy playing their cards ever so closely to their chest… and continually breeding suspicion and fragmenting the movement…

So where are we now?

Well as ever we seem to yet again be in the middle of a game of three and a half halves… pfdj on one end… EDA on the other end and Medrek too… and then there is the rest of us watching and clutching our tiny piece of the jigsaw, scratching our heads thinking:

Where does this piece fit in then?

I suppose I should conclude here (not because I have come to a logical conclusion of any sort  but simply because this article has to finish somewhere)

… surely the purpose of all our meetings, conferences and dialogues is to turn this into a game of two halves… pfdj on one end the rest of us on the other side…so the effect of the most recent bursts of activities can only be measured in relation to their success in creating that configuration… anything else would simply amount to taking us for a bumpy ride… opening our wounds to the elements and then leaving us to heal all on our own… as the roller-coaster operators disappear for good few years, only to reappear again and tell us… ‘that didn’t work did it?’

Selam