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ELF-RC and EPC (Islah)
Hold
Bilateral Talks on EDA
Matters
By
ELF-RC Office for Information and Culture
27.03.2007
High level delegations of the ELF-RC
and the Eritrean People’s Congress (EPC) on 26 March 2007 held bilateral
talks in Khartoum and evaluated the outcome of the recent EDA congress.
Initiated by and held at the office
of EPC (also known as Harakat al-Islah al-Islami al-Eritri) the meeting
was attended on the Islah side by Adem Ismail (Abu Haars), head of
economy and finance office; Ali Mohammed Saeed, head of information, and
Abdurahman Osman (Abu Badr), head of Khartoum office. On the ELF-RC side
were Woldeyesus Ammar, the chairman; Tesfai Woldemichael (Degiga), the
vice chairman; Gime Ahmed, head of social affairs, and Mohammed Adem
Artaa, head of the office for youth and women’s affairs.
The two sides agreed in their
evaluation of the EDA congress as a relative success achieved through
compromises that led to revising controversial articles in the Charter.
However, both sides had differing views on the cause of the crisis but
all the same agreed on the fact that the EDA central council failed to
elect a leadership.
The ELF-RC noted that the congress
was convened in the first place to resolve a number of big issues that
included settling the problem of proportional representation, but this
issue was once again left pending because no effort was done by the
executive office to have it settled at the congress.
The EPC/Harakat Islah delegation
emphasized that the split of the EDA in two blocs was not to the
interest of anybody and none of the member organizations expected a
split until it happened.
The ELF-RC delegation expressed
satisfaction in the role of Islah in helping revise the Charter but did
not hide its surprise at the Islah Movement’s insistence on Hussein
Khalifa’s candidature for a third term. The ELF-RC reaffirmed that it
had no ill feelings towards Hussein Khalifa and the sisterly
organization that he leads but it expected all organizations not to
insist on his candidature after discussing at the central council
meeting the defective reports and shortcomings of Hussein Khalifa’s
leadership in the previous two years.
The ELF-RC delegation also stated
that the compromises that today’s Bloc One presented at the central
council meetings were sufficiently reasonable proposals that could have
saved any split in the alliance.
The Islah Movement and ELF-RC
underlined the importance of consensus in the life
of
any alliance, and agreed that the
EDA is now split in two parts and that there is a need of searching for
a mechanism that can facilitate coordination of activities between the
two blocs as well as other opposition organizations.
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