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TO THE POINT |
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What Is the Positive Side of PFDJ? Our
column, To The Point, has summarized into four the questions most
frequently asked by readers of Nharnet.com. They were as follows:
Readers
may recall that we have already provided honest answers to the first two
questions. Today, we will attempt to answer the third and the fourth
questions very briefly. Question
3: The third question appears to be coming from those who think PFDJ has positive sides. It is highly probably that those people also think that all what PFDJ and Isayas Afeworki do are correct. We do not share that thinking. Look
at this bad start: Right after
the full liberation of the homeland in 1991, the ELF-RC decided to give
the benefit of the doubt to the ‘provisional government’ that the EPLF
declared under the same Isayas Afeworki whose authoritarian character was
easy to discern throughout the years of armed struggle. On 20 June
1991, the new head of independent Eritrea threatened to persecute other
Eritreans who would attempt to continue as organized political groups.
That was already a bad start for our new Nation. However, the ELF-RC
could not accept this blatant declaration against the participation of
other Eritreans in the political, economic and social life of the country,
and it went on challenging the provisional government and demanding the
rightful participation of all political organizations in building the
future of the country together. In
the fall of 1991, the provisional government positively responded to a
call for a dialogue. A team of high-level leadership cadres headed by Btsai
Ahmed Mohammed Nasser, the then Chairman, was ready to fly to Asmara
and find ways of participating in the politics of the country and/or
settling and operating inside the country as a peaceful political party.
Of course, people inside Eritrea started having great expectations
with the anticipated tolerance and choice of political views in the
country. However, those expectations and our people’s great wish to
see ELF returning home scared the autocrat Isayas Afeworki and caused him
to cancel the invitation for dialogue without any declared reason to do
so. Thirdly,
ELF-RC went on ignoring the mistaken actions of the new head of state.
Instead of confronting the regime with arms and violence, the ELF-RC had
already decided in 1991 to cease military operations and, instead, engage
the regime in a dialogue for understanding and charting the new life in a
democratic way. Nothing
worked. Since
liberation, what Eritrea lacked was democratic participation of the people
and its political organizations. The sources of all the evil things that
we witness in Eritrea today have originated from this politics of
arrogance, chauvinism and exclusion manifested in the very first years of
our independent existence. All what has happened is an open book well
known to us all and needs narration in this writing. Therefore,
we see practically no positive side to the Eritrean government’s
politics of exclusion, war and dictatorship during the past decade. We
still ask what is positive side of PFDJ? For us, it is not there, and
therefore we cannot talk of what does not exist or what we cannot see. It
is up to PFDJ apologists to tell us what, if any. Question
4: The
Eritrean head of state has been inculcating in the minds of his audiences
the misperception that the ‘the other organizations’ harbour only
hatred towards the EPLF/PFDJ. In fact, this is not a ‘ Newtalk’ for
the author of the old book of hatred and suspicion, ‘Nehnan Elamanan’.
In any case, we members of the ELF-RC do not have any everlasting grudges
and ever-pending revenge to be paid against Isayas Afeworki.
Our concern and lifelong dream is to guarantee the well being of
Eritrea and the Eritreans – i.e. of all of us. The
ELF-RC repeatedly acknowledges that organizations can lodge charges
against one another, but cannot claim to have the power of rendering
judgment or passing final verdict on one another. It is true that the
ELF-RC believes that individuals who have committed crimes and atrocities
against our people at any moment during the past 41 years must be held
accountable for his/her action. We are fully in favour of presenting all
individual cases and evidences to the people via a process designed and
agreed upon by democratically elected representatives of the people. That
is all what we stand for. Based
on this principle, the ELF-RC has never been engaged in any personal
vendetta against any one including, Isayas Afeworki, an individual
Eritrean whose words and deeds against the ELF have been more than grudges
and revenges. Yet, the ELF-RC and other factions of the ELF have not until
now shown any aim of physically harming Isayas as a person. There were
many ways of doing that, but no one wanted it. Every reader of modern
Eritrean politics should review that fact. Isayas
Afeworki’s and PFDJ’s names get mentioned whenever there is a decision
and action worth commenting because PFDJ is Isayas and Isayas is the only
one with the real power in the PFDJ structure. Even those who hold the
highest positions in the PFDJ hierarchy seem to be working only upon his
blessing and according to his whims.
That is why we call his system
“one man dictatorship”. In
other words, we call the spade ‘spade’, and Isayas and his PFDJ
cohorts tell our people that we are saying that because of “grudges”
and “hatred”. It is far from it. The
Nharnet Team
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