Fetsum: SELF RELIANCE or SELF DESTRUCTION IIREMINDER: My computers are still messed up and I am working at minimum to communicate in this forum. I apologize ahead if you find my article longer than your expectation but I hope you understand the problem.

Objective reality: ‘The duty of our elected president, congress members and state representatives is to serve, protect and defend the citizens of our nation under the laws given to them by the peoples constitution and bill of rights.”

President Obama: “What is absolutely true is that my first job, my most sacred duty, as president and commander in chief, is to keep the American people safe. My job is both to protect the American people and to protect the American way of life, which includes our privacy. And so every program that we engage in, what I’ve said is, let’s examine and make sure that we’re making the right tradeoffs”

The burning question of Eritreans: Where is the President’s statement on the perished citizens off the shores of Lampedusa? Why is he quiet so far in the face of unprecedented international reaction on the tragedy? Would not a sane person expect him to address the national emergency immediately? The strange regime only gave a half page worth information at Shabait and disappeared leaving our victims to be buried in Italy. It got away with this and managed to let families in despair without the chance of formally and traditionally burying their dead as if they were worthless. Not only did this government exposed its true nature in this tragic episode but also violated the right of our people to bury their dead and that of the society’s to express its collective respect openly.

For the record, the Eritrean government issued the following phrasing on the accident in its very short statement: “The prime responsibility for the gross loss of human life, as verified by concrete evidences, squarely rests on the US Administration that assigns agents of international and regional bodies, in addition to deploying various officials and spy agencies of different governments.”

Comment: Where is the concrete evidence? EXCUSES, EXCUSES and EXCUSES that do not make sense: Keep on blaming the US for every mistake you made until you wake up one day burning in your flame. The US has nothing to do with the disaster and in fact has been trying to help get the victims buried at home through NATO resources. Is not is true that the regime chases citizens out and the US collects them as refugees, meaning that the US respects Eritrean lives more than the regime does? The victims of the tragedy faced their destiny in their attempt to reach the US as their final resting point for life because they could not make it at home under this dictatorship: they were conditioned to trust the WEST more than the extremely oppressive regime.

There is no doubt in my mind that Obama has been shocked about the death of Eritreans in the Sea more than the insensitive Eritrean president. We saw the news in all US Newspapers and the US has already taken a concrete step to improve the situation of Eritrea refugees in the Sudan as immediate reaction to the accident. What has our government done to change the situation in contrast in the absence of any condolence from the president? How can a government that denies the right of Eritreans to be buried at home and that only provides a half paged statement blaming the US for the problem boast of representing the people on this tragedy? Don’t our people deserve a word of condellence directly from his mouth as a matter of right if not because of compassion? What is his job?

How does the regime survive with this extent of leakage?Eritreans are disgusted enough to abandon the regime with the exception of the good for nothing parasites (charlie, kisha, monkey, usman, girma, etc) and the useless Generals that should by now be addicted to their ridiculous boss’s abuses. We have about 75,000 refugees in Ethiopia and 125,000 in Sudan alone with about 600 Eritreans sneaking out every month at this point in experience after independence. The situation has now started to agitate known supporters of the regime because of hopelessness: Endless crisis, death, exodus, human rights abuse and negligence beyond the resistance of an ordinary human being. The fate of Eritrean families has become death and condolence in the complete absence of the regime’s attention. The regime considers our citizens at home as its property and their desperately running kids as criminals where the people are condemned to remotely suffer the consequence of death and the regime enjoying the show. How more sadistic can it get?

Everything is, however, time sensitive no matter how permanent it seems to the fools: people naturally get tired of abuse at the end of it and do something to change their situation. Patience overflows and the least they can do is leave the country in search of anything that may come in the way at the risk of life, the reason for the famous Eritrean Artist Yohannes Tukabo (Wedi Tikabo) finally detached himself from the indefensible regime. Good move and I hope this will encourage Eritreans to think about their political positions and resist for change stronger than ever.

The question: What are the other so called Artists or musicians specially the veterans going to do now? Will they continue living with their fear and serving the regime specially after the recentLampedusa disaster or change direction towards the resistance? Would their spirituality allow them to continue serving the regime after what happened in Lampedusa?

The Diaspora: Pattern tells that the Eritreans in Diaspora react effectively whenever a crisis as such takes place with no solution in site. We are good at bringing flowers to the dead but terrible in helping out when they suffer alive. The slow death of Eritreans everywhere (Sinai, the Red Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, etc) is a good sign of what waits for all of us under this brutal regime. In essence, 5 million of us are in coffins and we are all dead.

The question: Why do we react any time a disaster takes place and return to our lives with nothing to do for the solution? Around 3,000 Eritreans have so far perished in the waters trying to reach Europe from Africa and 5 million of us are potentially dead (at least psychologically) waiting for our turns to rest in the graveyard by different causes of physical death (stress, sickness, blackmailing, prison and accidents). This being our situation, why are we scavenging for disaster to fight back for our rights instead of uniting and resolving our issues together once and for all?
For how long will we meet and split after disasters with nothing to work on ahead? Aren’t you tired of uniting to burn candle lights and demonstrations and refusing unity for permanent solution? Why do you make disasters instead of the worst absolute dictatorship that denied you everything including your freedom to motivate your UNITY? Are you going to UNITE now or you will keep on making government infiltration an excuse for failure as usual? Can you prove your respect to the victims and their families by deciding to unite or you will continue pretending as usual?

NOTE: I am complaining about our past activities and confusing resistance not about what Eritreans are doing internationally about the tragedy. Our people are crying together internationally consistent to our culture and this is outstanding. The reaction to this tragedy was fantastic and we should keep on expressing it in any form possible. But let us produce UNITY out of it to close our case with the main cause of the problem.

On the president’s recent interview with ERiTV (part 2)

On Cement: Eritreans cannot even build homes with their money in their country. All the down payments paid more than ten years ago have been vandalized by the government. The government could not provide cement (abundant in Eritrea) because housing was never its priority: homelessness was the government’s tool of avoiding Eritreans in the Diaspora similar to poverty and ignorance that have been used for diverting the people’s attention from finding a solution to their political problems. Infatuating with ALSHABAB and going toe to toe with Meles and the US consumed all his attention and resources for him to suddenly wake up realizing the extent of mess he created for the people.

After the president talked a lot on cement’s importance in society and the failure of almost all housing projects with the exception of three (Massawa, Korea and another) he said that; “the cement industry must be conditioned to efficiently work independent of the HIRGIGO power plant to supply the huge demand as soon as possible”. A completely independent power plant is necessary for the CEMENT factory to start producing according to the president.

The question is how this is possible in the midst of power outage even in Asmara. What is the priority between supplying power to the people and building a power plant for the cement factory? I don’t know about you but I find it very difficult to face this problem with this level of confusion. In decent societies, both are important and mandatory: people cannot live without electricity and construction. Our people are, however, forced to live without them and the government has not yet started any initiative as to how to resolve the issues simultaneously.

He even questioned the difficulty of this hallucination soon after he said the phrase. Power plants do not walk to your site and they take time to put together, which means the president’s imagination with nothing on the ground will take years if real work starts right now and finishes without any problem (unfortunately there is none). The housing issue therefore will remain the same and may never change considering the total confusion of the government and its shaky financial management capacity because of too many mismanaged projects and waste of resources all over the place, of course corruption included.

HEALTH: Considering the impressive condition of our health facilities during the struggle where it used to efficiently serve the Tigrean masses beyond our borders and the deterioration in this regard through the years, one can safely conclude that today’s Eritrean health situation stands at its worst condition both in efficiency and in quality compared to any time in our history. The DOCTOR President went on and on as usual to cover up the terrible performance in this regard. The government discouraged our medical doctors to leave the country at different stages of its administration. The situation is so bad that “a patient in Asmara had to use his own GENERATOR for having surgery in one of the medical facilities because of lack of electricity. The delay took its toll and he passed away in the process.”

OVER ALL SITUATION: The president said; “All initiatives under goodwill have failed and we have nothing to show: It was a regrettable past. No tangible result has been produced under our policy. Energy and water infrastructures, Private investment drive and housing projections all failed. Every policy must be revised and reconfigured from the scratch either through self criticism or something else.”

Comment: Self Criticism does not help now and will not fix the convoluted and interconnected problems in our country unless it comes with the resignation of the president in the package. Persistent negligence and insanity has complicated the problems to the level of a network one wonders about where to start to fix.

We can neither afford to give this regime another chance of blander nor can we trust it any longer after 22 years of absolute opportunity. Based on experience and its record, the government has already wasted billions in useless and inefficient projects and wars. Can you trust it to do better with the millions it is making and will make from our resources? Chances are they will continue mismanaging our wealth until we have no more left for future generations. The regime should have wasted most of our wealth in the next ten years should it get a chance to stay in power without a constitution and accountability. The Eritrean situation is therefore an emergency that must be tackled immediately without delay.

THE PRESIDENT’S WAY OF LIFE: NEGATIVITY AND CONTRADICTION

The president’s negativity is a proven fact that we should no longer have any problem accepting. So should be about his contradictive mindset.

The president said; “We cannot do all these alone without investors (companies and countries included) should we go for reconfiguring all failed policies under our administration through the past regrettable political life”

The president seemed disappointed about his performance in the areas of INVESTMENT. Yet, he cannot see his COMMUNISTIC outlook on business economics that allowed his system to monopolize everything in the country and the demoralizing 2% tax exploitation as few of the main causes of the problem. His contradictory mind dreams to succeed in investment under his communist system with all the factors that caused total failure in Eritrea intact. This is a contradiction!

The question is what happened to the SELF RELIANCE rhetoric that crippled the country to this point of destruction? Did not the government preach us of its successful self reliance ideology for years? Clearly, the success of self reliance depends on freedom of participation, democracy and intellectual input never on absolute dictatorship. Self reliance requires groupthink of every capable citizen the way we accomplished it during the struggle and not a single brain in society like Mr. Afwerki did it after independence.

Therefore, the president’s concept of self-reliance was totally defective and the result is evidence to this conclusion. It was a contradiction that was bound to fail and it did.

The president admired the overall Sudanese performance in the medical field when confronted on the ridiculous medical issues in the country. Yet, he said “he does not know how they succeeded and that trying to copy what others did was fundamentally wrong.” This was a contradiction by itself: What can a president who fails on something and does not want to learn from other societies accomplish? The answer is nothing: you either do it yourself or learn from others but if you can’t do it and refuse to learn from others, you must be a confused individual hanging on there with no solution to the problems you created. This experience reflects the contradictory mind of the president that has been standing in the way of development and peaceful life in our country.

As you might have heard, Yemane Monkey was in Italy working on the dead Eritreans in the Mediterranean disaster where he said that “the dead Eritreans have the right to be buried at home and that will take place soon”

Would not this contradict the government’s misadventure on the fate of Naizgi Kiflu’s remains? What are they drinking nowadays? As the situation unfolds, Yemane Monkey’s promise ended up being another deception as usual. The regime has systematically discouraged NATO’s offer to transport the dead as we witness the hard truth that burial has already started in Italy opposite to our people’s wish.

IN THE MEAN TIME: The visionless Eritrean resistance in Diaspora has frustrated prominent peace loving politicians. They are telling us what we should do to change our situation and we are not listening.

Don Connell: This brother had already told us during the Independence Day celebration that the resistance cannot succeed as it is unless we change our approach to attract international support through unity and effective communication knowhow for assistance and funding. He told us what the US wants to see us do in order to assist and he knows this very well as the most prominent American Expert on ERITREA. Sadly, no one listened and nothing has been done to this effect ever since.

Mr. Koffi Anan’s response to an Eritrean activist called Meron on Eritrea: “some of the issues you raised the governance and the political issues in your country can only be tackled through the people of Eritrea forming civil societies, making civil societies organization to put pressure on their leaders and government to do the right, I know the situation in Eritrea is very difficult both in terms of politics and economics and that is why you are exposed to migration, but to tackle it you need strong social society organizations otherwise the leaders and the politicians are not going to give you any attention.”

Conclusion: Frankly, nothing will unite us if the cause of our victims in the Mediterranean Sea doesn’t. We cannot keep going wasting energy on other means of struggle other than UNITY because it won’t work. It is time to listen to others and do the right thing to change the Eritrean situation. They are telling us that we cannot do it without UNITY and clear diplomatic STRATEGY, good luck, otherwise if you chose to stick with your fragmentation.