The Sept. 1st anniversary evaluation of the Political Cultures that got us where we are today, and how the tyrant weakened the Eritrean people
Every year, on the Eritrean Revolution day, it is customary for most of the Eritrean political organizations/groups to report their year-end accomplishments and to proclaim plans for the coming year on how to fortify their fights against the enemies of the Eritrean people. The priority of these organizations/groups is to ensure the continuation of the Eritrean revolution. And yearly, the pro-democracy Eritreans – justice seekers reassess their position to seek ways to speed up the defeat of the tyrant by first focusing on uprooting the seeds of disunity that the tyrant sowed to weaken all the pro-democracy groups.
The seeds of disharmony, discord and strife planted by the tyrant have polarized the Eritrean political groups causing silent hatred, disunity, and frustrations that resulted in weakening the Eritrean people. The tyrant used the following three pronged spear to weaken the Eritrean people.
Firstly, the tyrant focused on destroying the family loyalty in order to strength the state loyalty. By weakening family loyalty and strengthening the state loyalty, every Eritrean had to give up on family members thereby killing the belief that family members should always be there for each other, even when facing threats on life and illegal action from the government.
Secondly, the tyrant instituted a new class system or a form of inequality in treating people based on their being regime favored, besides those who have superiority by reason of being family members of the generals and those in high military ranks. Those favored people have access to all services and resources including travelling abroad.
Thirdly, the tyrant utilized economic strangulation to weaken the Eritrean people economically denying the people to lead dignified and self-sufficient life capable of meeting their basic needs. All of the working class people do not earn enough to cover their basic necessities. Those who do not receive remittances from their family members abroad are subjected to poverty and hunger, suffering daily severe hardship. The state imposed fear and compliance on the people and that made Eritrea the only country in the world where extreme poverty and hunger do not spark rebellion.
How the Tyrant First Tasted Power and implanted it to remain in Power
The tyrant, ever since his founding of his SelfiNatzinet group in October 1971, he insists on ruling without restriction. For him, the tyrant, the transitional government of 1993 was an opportunity to centralize power in one hand and only in his hand. If the tyrant assumes to be an absolute leader without crown and without hereditary succession to pass it down to his offspring, then he is seeking to be an unelected leader or the so called “president for life.” However, the way he concentrating his power looks like he is seeking to exercise the tyranny of Pharaoh as seen from his cruelties and devastation of the nation with its people.
On the flipside of the tyrant, there stood the G-15 and the other pro-democracy elements, who sought restriction of power in order to deny the tyrant’s absolute power. The G-15 believed that the transitional government was a power-sharing provisional government until the election was held and a duly elected government took over within the stated ‘provisional’ period.
According to G-15, the democratically-elected civilian government in place of the transitional government was categorized as power sharing and inclusive emphasizing social justice and human rights, all of which to be enshrined in the constitution that was duly approved and implemented. But the tyrant caught the G-15 off-guard and blamed them for the defeat of the Eritrean defense forces at the hands of the Ethiopians. Upon putting the G-15 under control, the tyrant converted the peaceful transitional process to upheavals that were blamed on the G-15 enabling him (the tyrant) to overthrow the transitional government. Thus, the tyrant killed the transitional government and declared a military dictatorship. By sending the G-15 to gloomy dungeons for life, the tyrant has become a ruler for life. In place of the G-15, the tyrant appointed military personnel (generals) that stepped into power and have taken power to govern the country mercilessly and cruelly.
The Tyrant declares Absolute Power to contain Enemy and Border Threats
It was evident that, in the absence of G-15 and the other pro-democracy, the tyrant’s plan for absolute rule was possible with the concentration of power and the shelving the approved constitution forever. To justify the imprisonment of the G-15, he accused them of causing political crises and treasons. And, to deny once and for all the resurfacing or the demand for implementation of the constitution, he forged strict public obedience and fear by weakening the ties among the remaining pro-democracy elements.
The tyrant’s rule has been made to depend on a culture that rejects justice and denies the rights of every Eritrean. With the help of self-seeking elements, the tyrant has spread political confusions by plaguing the nation and its people with phrases that present him as the only person who can defend Eritrea and the Eritreans. Distorting news and stories that paint him (the tyrant) as the victim of the UN, African leaders and Ethiopian conspiracies have had their effects in confusing his supporters.
The economy was made to depend on those struggle era “farmers’ Quadere system” that has been imposed on the whole nation and supported by Sawa conscripts as well as forced voluntarism. Those who refuse voluntarism are subjected to fear of not being called CIA or Weyane agents, just similar to those of the struggle era, fears of not being called CIA agent or reactionary. Under the heavy hand of the tyrant, the system has capitalized on weaknesses of the people helping the regime to gain more power. However, due to the lack of openness and absence of rule of law the people have continued to be forced to participate in any public programs. No doubt, the people have continued to silently express their frustration and feelings that the regime deprived them of their rights in order to subjugate and cruelly doom to slavery forever.
The tyrant’s strength is in exploiting the weakness of the people. Only those who have weaknesses (specifically, those who can be blackmailed) are closer to him. For best exploitation, the tyrant confines and makes use of the people based on the level of their weaknesses and fears. Those who cannot think the way the tyrant looks at things (or his enemies) are denied the ticket of flocking with his (the tyrant’s) birds (his inner circles). This is how the tyrant builds his strength on the weakness of others, which weaknesses are maintained through fears and compelling issues.
Because the tyrant perceives all the Eritrean youth as a threat, orders are given to retain those who succumb to his rule and force to flee the country those who are not ready to comply with. However and whatever the level of succumbing is, no youth is found to be compatible with the system providing them with opportunities to thrive and grow successfully. Unlike the leaders of the other newly independent countries, the tyrant does not want to provide the youth with trust and ease to enable each of them to grow to the fullest possible capability so as to save the country from walking with crutches, unable to climb the steps of nation building.
Contrary to what the tyrant’s claims, the steps of nation building internationally include safety, political reform that ensures freedom of press, economic reconstruction, and empowerment of the legal institutions. However, the tyrant’s weakness of not trusting the people is destroying the nation, making it unable to function like a nation of people. Yes, Eritrea under the tyrant is missing nationhood, where the people are allowed to freely discuss their plans and air their concerns and fears without fear in order to discover opportunities of living together in peace, elect their representatives, industrialize their nation and create jobs.
Even though the signs of collapsing into a failed state are very high, the regime continued to deny that its problems are internally caused. The country and its people are made to be exposed to transient and revisiting shocks from mass punishment to mass arrest and from mass starvation to mass killings/disappearance and mass exodus.
The regime is not tolerant to those Eritreans who freely conduct political activity internally. Therefore, all those with opposing political views were forced to leave the country. The rule of the jungle has imposed a state of terror and disorder allowing corruption to suppress the mass. To bring under control the self-created corruptions, the corruptions that have become excessively prevalent over the years, the regime declared replacement of Nacfa currency notes with new notes. Yet, the said corrective measure through currency change proved to be worse in its punishment of the mass. A case in point, there is this Eritrean who has 20 Million Nacfa in his bank account and who due to his terminal disease, a doctor in the Sudan told him that he had months left to live. But, the tyrant decreed that he could only withdraw 5 (five) thousand Nacfa a month, condemning this terminally sick Eritrean to getting a maximum of Nacfa 60,000 (sixty thousand) during the days he is left to live. All his children who live abroad are denied entry to see their father due to reasons that they are members of the Eritrean pro-democracy movements. So, the children are denied access to their father’s money in the bank and they appear to have dropped their claim until the tyrant is removed and for the total love of liberty. Therefore, the tyrant has illegally confiscated all their money in the bank amounting to Nacfa 19,999,940,000.
The regime has continued to abuse power under the guise of border threats and false programs, including nation building and replacement of currency notes to control corruption that worsened the conditions of the mass. The country has been dragging back to primitive and medieval darkness, where life has totally stopped due to absence of electricity, medicine and healthy food. The regime looks like it has lost its limbs in that it could not bounce back after its wars with Djibouti, Ethiopia, the Sudan, and Yemen. Yet, the tyrant is justifying his failure as being caused by outside conspiracies.
Is a Threat of a Failed State hovering overhead Eritrea?
To the neighboring countries, Eritrea is already in the process of becoming a failed state. The sign common among the failed states is mass exodus. To the neighboring countries it has been quite a long time since they started picking pieces of the failed state including refugees, crossing the borders daily. But the neighboring countries are bribed by the Arab Gulf countries not to take action against the regime in Asmara, even though the costs they are paying for their imposed silence are heavy. Additionally, the contrabandists of the regime are freely smuggling goods and human beings across the borders.
The regime is using contraband of war policy to get free goods in from the neighboring countries, ripping them (the neighboring countries) off the goods they have paid with their own hard currencies. On the other hand, it can be said that the neighboring countries might be allowing the contraband business out of mercy for the starving Eritrean people. But to the supporters of the tyrant who are on hard to believe that Eritrea is becoming a failed state, despite all the signs, they have to continue to behave like a bad liar who is covering up his weakness until the country implodes and explodes into pieces.
The pro-democracy members including all Eritreans who are affiliated with justice seekers appear to have started to evaluate their year-end future actions based on the year-end outcomes. For the justice seekers, facing the facts and knowing the needed changes should revolve around the COIE demands. The tyrant should be struck hard on his weak spots, the spots that are demanded by the COIE. It is not time to cave in to the pressure of those middle-grounders or the anti-Eritrean people, who care more about the tyrant.
Nowadays, there are more talks than ever about the weaknesses of the tyrant fueled by the COIE’s accusation of crimes committed against humanity in Eritrea. Therefore, there is no need to separate the wheat from the chaff in Eritrea because the system is full of chaffs, as reported by many international newspapers. Just what the pro-democracy movements should do is to keep taking the cases of the COIE to the big cities of the west. Yes, just another and another demand calling for the criminals who committed crimes to stand trials for crimes and atrocities they ordered and committed. Up to now, each and every demonstration against the tyrant in support of the COIE demand appears to be more successful from the last. As the strategy of the year out, the strategy of the coming year is to continue the demonstrations in support of the COIE, which might conceivably lead to speeding up the trial as well the demonstrations will help to make the tyrant’s survival to appear a bleak,
What the Tyrant stands for and what Destiny is awaiting him
The regime in Asmara has lost the respect of the people because the tyrant does not pay attention to the problems of the people. The tyrant has ignored all the pressing problems, and instead has focused on making the people penniless. The tyrant appears to have found the scheme of immersing the people in extreme poverty as an effective means to control them.
The G-15 and the other pro-democracy elements struggled to see the constitution implemented in order to save the people from the tyrant’s cruel policies. The G-15 like the other Eritreans believed that the Eritrean Revolution is considered to be a big trunk of the tree from which branches representing rights of the people have sprung out. Those rights that the Eritrean Revolution promised include the rights to free educations and equal employment; rights to think, speak and write without fear of government’s retaliation; rights to fair trial and rights to ask for investigation of abuses committed by the government; rights of civil liberties and property rights; the right to form a political party and the right to become a member of any organized political party; rights to freely travel in and out of the country as well as to hold Eritrean-families reunions inside Eritrea without any fear of intervention and threat, etc.
Under the Eritrean Revolution aspirations, the people were expected in the past 25 years to enjoy the fruits of their hard work, changing all aspects of their economic life by undergoing economic developments and expansions. But, instead, the tyrant got Eritrea stuck in wars, poverty and internal strife of landlords or his generals. It is evident that the economy of Eritrea is presently in chaos, with all productive forces being compelled to live in ditches or are herded daily into trucks to be taken to prisons. Once a member of an Eritrean opposition group described the Eritrean economy as being driven by starvation and death (ናይ ጥምየትን ሞትን ቕድድም) because life there remained stagnant and there is nothing other than starvation and death.
Indeed, the tyrant and his generals failed once and forever because they could not bounce back from their defeat of border wars with neighboring countries. Thus, the politics of Isayasism, which is nurtured by falsehood, deceit, greed and hatred as well as intolerance and discrimination, caused the regime and its supporters to become politically ignorant and politically bankrupt.
The justice seekers with the help of the COIE proved that the tyrant is nothing and that his power is shading away gradually in front of the united pro-democracy forces. The justice seekers should continue punching until the tyrant becomes toothless and loses his ability to bite any Eritrean.
As the G-15 and the other imprisoned pro-democracy elements were the victims of their humility, the tyrant will soon become the victim of his pride. Let the tyrant know, on this anniversary date of the Eritrean Revolution, that the G-15 and those others how are in his prisons are not out of the Eritrean people’s minds, even though they are put out of sight in his prisons. And, let the tyrant know, on this anniversary date of the Eritrean Revolution, that celebrating the anniversary of the Eritrean Revolution is not a form of propaganda; it is indeed a form of truly believing in the power of the people and democracy as well as the rule of law that restricts power by having well-defined laws that are enshrined in the constitution. And finally, let the tyrant know that the repeated tragedies of those innocents who are perishing in the border, the deserts and the seas reflect the very injustice of the tyrant’s rule in that he is still committed to continue to be involved in crimes against the humanity. That’s why; the UN is saying that the tyrant’s harsh injustice makes democracy necessary in Eritrea now and immediately before many more can become victims of his injustice.
Long live the Eritrean Revolution
Mamino
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