AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT ISAIAS AFWERKI

Confronting Eritrea’s Leadership Crisis!!

PART 7

TO: President Isaias Afwerki

FR: Dr. T. A. Taddesse

RE: The Triumph of Dictatorship!!

Date: 22 November 2005

Mr. President:

I listened to your Tigrigna interview, and read its English version with much, too much disappointment. Obviously, the target audience for the Tigrigna version is the Eritrean public, and the English version has been crafted for foreign consumption. To my knowledge, you must have presented this same message, with no significant change I must add, every year for the last fourteen years. You talk about improvement in infrastructure without providing a shred of data to support your claim.

That is not my outstanding worry. My outstanding worry is that you don’t even know what the heck you are doing. The people of Eritrea are paying you salary to perform a job. You are not delivering. Do you know what your responsibility is as a head of state, Mr. President? Your only responsibility is to make good decisions for Eritrea, not to go around and check projects for quality control. There are experts that are qualified to do quality control. For the last 14 years, your batting average on making “good decisions,” has been mediocre, at best.

As you probably know, nations do not become prosperous by coincidence, nor do they become bankrupt by accident. There are policies that encourage nations to be prosperous and there are policies that drive nations to their utter doom. Based on the policy decisions you make, it is clear that you can make or break a nation. Barely 14 years after its victorious war of liberation, Eritrea has reached a point where it meets all the criteria of a failed nation. Its institutional structures exhibit internal decay. The economy is in shambles. Health services have deteriorated beyond repair. The quality of education is just as hopeless. Malnutrition and diseases are rampant. The Eritrean people, purveyors of legitimacy to your government, are in a state of perpetual bewilderment.

Mr. President:

The government of Eritrea, under your leadership, has finally awakened to recognize these traumatic objective conditions, but seems unable to stop this dangerous momentum. Like a bad doctor, all your interventions on any or a combination of these factors have so far resulted in a quantum exacerbation of the predicament faced by the confused and shocked population. For all practical purposes, the political divide between the people and your government is so humongous one may assume there is no government in Eritrea. When a people totally disregard the presence of an existing government and continues to circumvent its authority on their day-to-day activities, that government is dead and buried for all practical purposes.

Mr. President:

It is time to recognize that the root-cause of Eritrea’s internal misery and external threat is the triumph of your dictatorship. You can’t continue to blame the rest of the world for retributions that accrue from your hubris and egomaniac adventures. You know Eritrea is the only nation in the world that does not have a constitution. You also know that a democracy that is long deferred is a democracy denied. Paraphrasing a statement of President Mandela of South Africa, “You cannot transform society if you are not willing to transform yourself first.” There you have it Mr. President: Do you have it within you to transform yourself? If the answer is a “yes,” let’s go on with it. If the answer is a “no,” please get out of the way and allow the people to make a fresh start all over again. It is about time we have elected officials who are transparent, inclusive and accountable to the people.

Last, but not least, it is unbecoming of a head of state to threaten Eritreans anywhere with violent acts for expressing their views. We are in the process of documenting and connecting the dots on your terrorist activities conducted through your cult followers in North America. Nobody is above the law in a democracy. It is foolhardy on your part to perpetrate terrorism on American soil. Leash your cult followers before it is too late.