Practicing Justice, fairness and truth in our discussion

By zemeheret Seare

“An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it....Truth without humility would be an arrogant caricature....” Mohandas K.Ghandhi

In his last article Mr. Nair wrote “My friends Asfaha and later Zemhret have never touched the issues I have raised in my serial articles, instead they have taken some rhetoric terms and confused the discussion that would have continued between me and them.

Your arguments discourage diversity of thinking and opinions. Such counter arguments hinder the progressive emergence of mutual understanding of the problems of unity and search for common solution for our domestic problems. I have learned from your arguments that we are far away to practice dialogue.”

With all due respect Mr. Nair let us not degrade the debate by making it an arena of exchanging blows among people with same goal. Your righteously indignation neglects how your tone of faulting others is taken by the reader in the above statement. Little is gained by merely aiming to score personal points. For civility sake, I will pass to respond in kind to the above comments and continue with the investigation of your earlier articles.

 It is suffice to point none of what I wrote suggests discouraging diversity of thinking and opinions.

You pointed your fingers at all members of ELF-RC both my self and Asfha W. included. Such mistakes should be fixed by bringing them to the forefront.

I don’t believe the claim that ELF-RC cadres attacked Mr. Beshir, Mr. Weldesus and their ethnic had any merit to begin with and it is not the motive of the articles.

It is natural to look for any reasonable explanations to the motive of such generalization.

Your readers who are following the discussions know, who is saying what in the internet. I am of opinion that the identity of those who have been attacking Mr. Beshir in the internet is other than members of ELF-RC.

To avoid the kind of negative discussions that does not heal us I will not repeat the allegations about comments to do with Kebesa people made by Mr. Beshir. The identity of who posted the allegations/charges on the opposition websites of Meskerem.net and Dekebat.com is not members of ELF-RC. I know this, and Mr. Nair knows it.

The articles written by members of ELF-RC regarding the problems that emerged within the EDA were all written with the names of their authors, they have a right to post their opinions or their side of the story. Any reply should have been to them personally.

If Mr. Nair has given us which article to refer to or what comments of which ELF-RC members he is referring to, people would have weighed the merit of his criticism or his charges. But the articles fail or miss to provide this critical element in their discussion.

What then is the explanation of Mr. Nair’s manifest anger and lashing out at ELF-RC including Asfaha and my self instead the people responsible for attacking his group and Mr. Beshir?

If Mr. Nair is angered by the actions of block-one why not direct his anger at the whole block?

 In what else context can people understand Mr. Nair’s tantrums, implying my organization as dominated by certain region, and calling certain groups of our members to join him? Is it of what is said about Mr. Beshir?  I feel it is not fair, is wrong to make such general accusations and should be fixed.

It has become customary to unfairly implicate the ELF-RC for failures of the whole opposition, while at the same time treating it as less influential and of insignificance. We should be truthful fair and consistent.

The real issue at play in my opinion is Mr. Nair is assigned as a gun man for the other side of Kidan, and he is shooting every possible mud he can master to lift, pining on hope that some thing damaging to ELF-RC and to the side that agrees with ELF-RC in the convergence of secular democratic trends will stick.

This modus operand needs to go and replaced with clarity, responsibility, rationality and fairness.

Building on the debate

-Sheria - Nationalities up to secession-Ethnic-Federalism-unitary  

These programs/organizations or preferences and ideologies may have emerged in Eritrean political arena, by real or perceived historical reasons, but the EDA (Kidan) charter adopted in the last conference dubbed a breakthrough is a compromise from all the philosophies. Building upon the progress without mixing the past experience with the future and the means with the end is needed.

Framing a charter of national appeal is indeed a breakthrough achievement in the last EDA conference. These gains need to be protected by all sides of the opposition.

The preferences of governments or ideologies put forward by respective sides are assumed for when power gets in the hands of Eritrean people. An important element here obviously is getting the power in the hands of the people and this precedes the process of what arrangement of government or system the country agrees to come up.

Bringing the Eritrean opposition under a working system or one umbrella is one project.

Debating what government arrangement/system for the free people when the dictatorship is removed is another.

Two strategies/systems or process; one a short term strategy/process to remove the dictatorship and other long term process or strategy, reaching at government of multiparty system;

EDA (kidan) is the short term strategy;

The set back

EDA suffered a set back in the process of electing leadership. The solution can only be achieved by compromise and reaching out. 

Clarity in the voices of the political organizations is important.

Those with similar programs need to converge. This is the motto of ELF-RC here and many Eritrean opposition groups.

For all intent and purpose the Eritrean political landscape has been categorized in three main grouping.

Religious, Ethnic/region rights, and the secular unitary with separation of religion from state administration politics;

With some organizations it is easy to tell and hard with others. Some pretend to be secular in practice but act/compete with the religious organizations.

Some mix between religious politicking and secular appearance and vice versa with others.

This is confusing. How do we clear this confusion?

For example I wish Mr. Nair can tell me if Federalia is a Secular or religious or what its core tenets are. Mr. Nair pointed out that my friend Asfaha lives in the US and he should know about federalism, I live in the US too. You know there is huge political, social, and economical difference between the two people. The framers of the American constitution are representatives of their constituent states. Can I ask if EFDM assumes there are state representatives for Eritrea, or do they hope to form states first and quickly arrange federation between the newly formed states?  

My, complain or demand to our leaders and citizens is to value integrity and fairness to declare their clear and specific political position in their discussions and in their actions.

It seems we delight to see the stalemate of the opposition in the confusion than to present clear cut programs and follow the principles of their charters thus giving clear choices of ideologies and charters.  

Mr. Nair to change the tone of our discussion, revealing other things deep down in my heart let me share that I am interested in the history and make up of our country. What group did what and how to move forward? As in any country it is not lost in me that we have dominant communities and minority communities. We all are aware that the Kebesa Tigrigna speaking are larger in number, are relatively affluent compared to the other groups hence had advantage to play dominant role in shaping the history of our country. As member of minority I am watchful and sensitive with the issue of minorities.

 I view that a distinction between universal rights and rights of Ethnic nationalities should be discussed widely. Similar to your views I support finding a legal separation and protection of autonomy in the affairs of Ethnic minorities. I don’t want to go in the theories I read about this. I am interested in discussing this issue with all sides of our people. But what I have been watching observing in the name of quest for ethnic minorities’ rights is proliferation of political organizations mixing up all issues and confusion.

 Mr. Nair I brought up this to tell you, that I value your contribution on the rights of Ethnic minorities. We can work in tandem on this. I know all of the opposition organizations are made up with members of the majority and members of the minorities. Things that unite us are more than those that divide us. We can and should be able to solve our problems. The dictatorship is our common problem and it is a priority order of our agenda. We have to be respectful to each other but the critical part in our discussion to me is we need to pay attention to fairness and justness of our discussion.

I wish you success and so long.

Glory to our martyrs