LIES
DO NOT
SUSTAIN DICTATORSHIPS
By Sami Mehari
At any age in human history, dictatorships tend
to believe that lies can sustain their system. They seriously judge that
the people will be manipulated and controlled easily as long as the lies
are cleverly framed up and made big enough not to be challenged by the
common folks. The master of modern day tyrants, Adolf Hitler, wrote in his
Mein Kampf “The broad masses of the people… will more easily fall
victims to a big lie than to a small one”. In more recent decades, the
Russian fighter for democracy, Alexander Solzhenitsyn , said in 19074 that
in his country “the lie has become not just a moral category but a
pillar of the state’. In our own Eritrea of today, the PFDJ government
nourishes itself on utter lies in every aspect of life in the country.
Take, for instance, the latest blatant lies unleashed for domestic
consumption by the PFDJ minister for trade and industry, Dr. Giorghis
Teclemichael.
In
an interview posted on 3 October 2002 in the dictatorship’s mouthpiece,
Shaebia.com, Dr. Giorghis supplemented more points to the litany of lies
that the regime churns out on a daily basis to misinform and deceive the
people who are treated as subjects without rights. The good minister
claimed the following:
·
“Investment prospects
are bright indeed” under PFDJ’s Eritrea.
·
Mengistu
Hailemariam’s command economy that stagnated industries in Eritrea has
been corrected by PFDJ as of 1999.
·
“Domestic investment
[in Eritrea], including by our nationals in Diaspora, has not been
affected very much [by the war with Ethiopia]”.
·
“There are
encouraging signs and concrete interests especially by investors from the
Middle East”.
Which
one of these claims can the regime defend with any concrete facts?
None. The aim of the
PFDJ regime and the errand boys of Isayas Afeworki is not to inform but to
continue misinforming their victims. PFDJ propagandists think that their claims cannot be
questioned because they are already big enough for the folks who tune to
‘ Dimtsi Hafash’ and read ‘Hadas Ertra’.
Regarding those who do not support the regime, nothing matters.
Simply they do not exist. The regime still believes that, thanks to its
assumed ‘invincible’ military muscle, it can go on ruling the country
as long as the petty tyrant wished it.
But
isn’t this downright lunacy? Otherwise,
who in the world can expect the blighted image of present-day Eritrea to
be so attractive to businessmen anywhere to let the regime claim that
investment prospects are bright? Hmmmm!
The
naïve PFDJ minister also shamelessly said that the “command economy”
of the Mengistu era has been put behind us in Eritrea and that the
“stagnation” of the industries in the country has been remedied.
Really? Isn’t the old command economy still intact under the PFDJ
misrule and the mismanagement and control of the economy through
state-affiliated businesses in all sectors of the national economy? Is the
stagnation of the industrial sector in Eritrea corrected? The reader for
sure has the correct answer, and this writer sees no need of commenting on
the issue.
We
are told that domestic investment is increasing – i.e. investments made
by the Eritrean Diaspora and our people in the country who are today
reduced to the status of ‘the wretched of the earth’.
Impossible. And haven’t the gross injustices and violations of
human rights by Isayas Afeworki and his regime angered the Eritrean
Diaspora, which is no more a milk cow that it was to the once “beloved
wedi Afom”?
It
was starting in the early 1990s that PFDJ’ command economy totally
discouraged domestic investment through its endless red tape, nepotism and
misadministration of national affairs. It was also since the start that
the regime divided and polarized Eritrea to “we” and “they” camps
and ordered political organizations and their supporters/sympathizers to
stay away from home and look for another home, if they could find one! In
that way, the country missed big opportunities of investment by its own
people of different political views that were willing to return home and
do something with whatever they had at hand.
The
insane war adventures of Isayas and his regime throughout the 1990s and,
finally, the internal PFDJ opposition to the dictatorship following the
military defeat of mid-2000, have isolated the regime from the Diaspora.
Therefore, Dr. Giorghis Teclemichael’s claim that domestic
investment by the Eritrean Disapora has not been affected very much can
only be described as a big lie to deceive those who don’t know the hard
facts.
Since early on, our Middle Easter fraternal
peoples have never been happy with the ways the PFDJ regime handled
Eritrea’s relations with its Middle Eastern neighbours. What credence
can a reader give to Shaebia.com and the interviewee claiming that there
are “encouraging signs and concrete interests” by Middle Easter
investors to come with their money to the Eritrea managed by PFDJ? That is
another big lie.
But to be fair to Dr. Giorghis and Shaebia.com,
the extracts of the interview were not without a single piece of truth. To
his credit, the minister made one important confession during the
interview. He told his interviewer that the regime recently conducted a
survey of household income and expenditure patterns in 12 Eritrean cities.
What they discovered for themselves was a disaster. In the words of
the minister:”Another unhealthy finding from the studies is the
growing gap in income distribution in our economy; more so than other
countries in the region”.
We know that distribution of the national cake
under the PFDJ regime, which is based on the policy of “who was with me,
who was not; who is with me, who is not”, cannot be fair to all
Eritreans. The scanty resources of our nation are for sure being
squandered by a narrow group of people who preferred personal survival
than the welfare of the rest of the people. Suffering, displacement, gross
injustices and inequalities – that is our Eritra nai lomi. Distortion of
the prevailing reality cannot and lies cannot sustain a dictatorship.
‘SinQin Hasotn enaHadere yfequis’. The PFDJ regime cannot cheat the
people for all the time.
Samimehari@hotmail.com
|
