In Search of Solomonic Judgement for Eritrea…

‘’Unity to be real must stand the severest strain without breaking’’

Mahatma Gandhi quotes

… but split the baby in half… and walk off, each carrying a dead baby seems to be the solution that every Eritrean conflict is resolved under currently…it wasn’t always like this… back in the days when everyone was armed up to hilt the solution used to be fight to obliterate the other and then take the damaged baby home to die a slower death! I don’t know which one is worse… but I had no say in the latter and would be dammed if I simply watch whilst mean people keep carving up babies in lazy politics!

PFDJ started the ball rolling on this, back in 2001 when in a bid to not listen to what one half of itself is saying , the organisation…rather PIA the organ that  then became the organisation carved his own organisation and put one half of it in prison and has been mollycoddling his dead and decomposing baby ever since… the same can be said about almost every Eritrean organisation that is currently in existence in the diaspora… we seem to be giving birth to countless babies full of potential (and pretty names to go with them) launching them in celebrations to end all celebrations and then before the said babies can talk or walk we fight over parenting rights… no not rights…privileges…(never about parenting responsibilities)… get involved in acrimonious confrontations… neglecting our much celebrated babies and eventually mutilating each one often by cutting them in half (or more) and leaving scene brandishing a freshly cut baby dripping fresh blood for the world to see… upon realising that what we have ended up with is actually a dead baby…the next day we go back to the drawing board to give birth to yet another baby that will not see life beyond infancy!   

In a bizarrely parallel show down this is exactly what the Eritrean National Alliance is doing to itself…in a bitter acrimony over an invitation extended to EPP by a third organisation last November… rather than work to protect its own baby the alliance seems to have preferred an option that risks cutting its baby in half and splattering the blood all over us… luckily for us this blood spilling is virtual blood… ironically the EPP which became EPDP  is also splitting its baby…by  chopping one third of the baby… the remainder two third is bleeding all over… slightly prior to all this ENSF had done so and prior to that EDA was split from inside only leaving its dead shell intact….

The problem is whilst the contending parents of all those babies don’t seem to mind the splitting… the rest of the public gasps with anguished pain every single time… if Solomonic wisdom was to be applied to all this the true parents of these unfortunate babies become all too apparent… the public that yearns for democracy, justice and peace is the real and rightful parent of the projects that are incepted… begat to only be mercilessly split in half by the parent imposters. If there was a wise judge about they would snatch the helpless baby away from all those people and hand it right back to the true parents… those who are crying for keeping the baby intact… for keeping the fight for freedom and justice in Eritrea alive… those who want to see an Eritrea united in all its diversity… remember the folk that resisted an option and chose a fate that didn’t involve splitting the baby...back when surrogate parent imposters suggested it to the UN?  they were the true parents of the struggle for the right of nationhood for Eritreans… and those who died realising that vision would turn in their graves every time the nation is threatened with a split by those who have no qualms about walking away with one half (one quarter...even one four millionth) of a bleeding baby…

It has become rather fashionable to speak about a dismembered Eritrea , where one group of people try to blame atrocities by PFDJ not on PFDJ proper but a made up version that includes sectors that have nothing whatsoever to do with PFDJ… for a whole year, last year, we had the Highland-lowland debate where we arrived at a dead end with the prescribed solution being; lowlanders need to be left alone to define their own future and hence the baby should be split in half… with folk on the ready to hoist a bleeding infant of  a nation as the trophy for their advocacy for the lowland! No one bothering about the fact that they will actually end up with half of a dead baby! And no one actually bothered to take note of the fact that lowlanders had already voted for keeping their baby intact…twice… no actually three times!

And then there is the other side to that grubby coin… the people who claim to have reached the verge of a point beyond return and are going to split the nation carving it into as many pieces as they see fit… I am not against the right of people to be stakeholders in their own nation, but I am against all those who want to tell me that the atrocities that are being committed by an unjust, undemocratic system are being perpetrated by one ethnic group against ‘their’ people… they are not!… if we maintain an unjust system then carving the baby within that system is just as bad… justice in Eritrea will not be guaranteed by ramming borrowed ideologies and slogans down the throat of a nation that the only time it was offered choices, chose to leave the baby intact and give it to whoever is claiming it! Current day logic would have called the people who chose to remain together despite unfavourable circumstances ‘chauvinists!’…

…there was no Solomonic judgement then…the true parents of the baby were ignored and it sounds like history is repeating itself and those who are advocating keeping the baby intact are frowned upon… Whilst those who advocate splitting the baby are actually celebrated… it is my sincere hope that this time there would be a wiser judgement than that of yester years.