Why do we need broad national organization ?
By Fesseha Nair
The objective of having an organization is to help us “gather forces” that is to say coordinate, support and develop human and material resources for use of the best way possible to reach specific goals. Similarly, the objective of the coming congress for democratic change is to gather forces for use of human and material resources in the best way to end the dictatorship and safe our people.
The external and internal conditions for any organizations can change over time. Any organization either a political or any other must improve its capacity to add value. The leadership of any organization bears particular responsibility for the process of continuous development. The need for organization at this time is to end the dictatorship inEritreaand lay down the foundation of democracy for the future.
The umbrella organization that will be gathering all forces for democratic change will be characterized by the key factors that are decisive for success. The umbrella organization that will be established after the coming congress in its keenness must realize its great visions and go from vision directly to practical operatives, for example prioritising activities, choice of methods and organization structure. The job of the coming organization is to have framework that ease and support implementation of its basic ideas. However, with time, members tend to cling on the structure rather than ideas. It is the structure which provides security. The unwillingness to change structure leads to a more and more ineffective organization. The Eritrean organizations either political or civil society are a good example of such ineffective structures. It is time to revise and restructure the development of organization.
The majority of the Eritrean organizations are led by a number of voluntary officials. What many of these organizations often lack is a well thought- out internal distribution of roles affirming who is responsible for what, i.e. distribution of roles and tasks between representatives and personnel in the organization, leading to considerable and unnecessary bother, frustration and tensions. For us Eritreans roles means titles without no functions and but to boast and show arrogance.
Majority of the Eritrean organizations hold themselves in poor self -perception with lack of belief in their ability to achieve goals or deal with problems and challenges along the way resulting in a certain degree of resignation. Such poor perception is often to lead us to blame games. We escape from responsibilities and blame others for our own failures.
The Eritrean organizations suffer of the attitude of , “ my organization” this attitude creates an affection for and loyalty towards the organization and impedes a healthy and natural questioning of the operations. The more the members of the organization are in affection the greater the risk of stagnation of the organization.
Organizations which are not ready for change live on blame games. They blame for their failures to others by calling themselves as the best and regarding the others as inferior because their major issues are sub-national issues while there are nationals. Those who claim themselves nationals are themselves the narrow minded chauvinists with cleavages of extreme regionalism, religion and ethnocentrism.
An important task of any leadership is to help the organization to utilise an urgent need for change to the positive. We see at this time various attitudes to the need for change. There are organizations ,
– with passive attitude- wait and hope for better times to come,
– reactive-try to keep as the best one can by reacting after the fact and fencing of changes which turn up,
– proactive- try being one step ahead, often using forecasts on the future,
– inter-active- interplay with external world, be flexible and open to various futures and changes.
The last attitudes- being proactive or interactive-are the only ones which can make full use of the rapid rates of organizational development and change which in many ways characterise our opposition camp and the environment in which the EDA member organizations have been active since the unity congress of the 2008 that evolved with many new ideas and structures after the past national conference 2010.
We have experienced in the last two years the capacity to change that gained partnership among political and civil organizations that made demands on leaders and personnel within organizations to be proactive or interactive and possess:
– Good ability to deal with a need to change.
– Ability to utilise change to the positive.
– Ability to live with continuous change.
– Flexibility and mobility, both mental and organizational.
– Receptivity and long term planning.
The coming congress need preparation both mentally and organizationally. The need for change can be at different levels. Many think that the current political organizations will be replaced by new ones. Some might think that their organization might be the vanguard. Some think that the EDA will never exist. There will be some changes but this does not mean the current political organizations or the EDA will be discarded but changes will at some levels.
There will be paradigm shift. When developing a broad organization the collection of political and civil organizations will introduce a model around which all the problems are solved. A paradigm shift is characterised by establishing and defining constraints to our thoughts and consequently our actions and indicate how to act within these constraints to attain success and solve the challenges and problems.
The coming congress will enable us cope with present and reassess our way of acting towards the future. The congress will enable us deal with difficulties and help us create new ways to solve the current problems. I think the time is ripe for paradigm shift. The national congress for democratic change is approaching; are we ready for paradigm shift?
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