Astroturfing Eritrean Politics

By Selam Kidane  

... the knack for mobilising the grassroots for a desired change must skip a generation… at least in terms of the generation of political leadership… If there is one thing that is common to ALL our current political organisations is the lack of real grassroots support they enjoy. And this goes for both the PFDJ camp and sadly for the resistance camp/s too. There just aren’t enough people on either side of the spectrum and spectrums within the spectrum who really care about the real issues and are willing to organise about these. If you don’t believe me just walk into an Eritrea gathering (not a preselected gathering) you know the ordinary type… say a community wedding (me and my weddings I know! But this really is where I take social temperature at its best!), and start talking about real issues and see how many people follow the conversation through to showing any level of commitment… sure people talk about issues and offer their opinion and would go on lecturing you about where you are failing but not many would show the kind of commitment that effected the Independence Struggle…the reason must be our inability to enthuse a large enough number of people, who passionately care about our issues of concern (e.g. democratic changes in Eritrea)… enough for them to organise around the said issues…this sort of grassroots movement is an extremely powerful political impetus that no political entity can afford to ignore. Inevitably this kind of movement is also no mean feat and inevitably, again, if we were honest, no current day Eritrea political or social organisation enjoys this level of grassroots following. Either the ability to be inspired enough to organise around an issue skips a generation or the knack to stir and motivate the public skips a generation… and hence the Eritrean political scene trudges on minus the voices of real people voicing real opinion under the banner of organisations that purport to speak for the people and their issues… 

This omission is too apparent to hide or brush aside though and in fact it has become the bane of the organisers of every group and frustrated we all wonder if we are talking about the same Eritrean public that the world came to know… how was it possible for the independence movements of yesteryears to mobilise an entire nation of a country that didn’t legally exist with little or no organisational resources and much less media and communication tools? In the absence of this, the bare scene, has become the tragicomedy that we know as Eritrean politics, which I am sure, is pure tragedy for those who have to live it… 

Faced by this seemingly immovable mountain of the challenge of building a real grassroots support, Eritrean organisations are often seen trying to circumvent via the sleazy route of the lazy route, endlessly recreating fake public opinions or fake groups promoting their motives as public opinions…Astroturfing Eritrean Politics! 

Astroturfing in politics is a campaign that uses/misuses the voices of either a specific demographic or a diverse group of people to push a political agenda, often without their full knowledge. Campaigns & Elections magazine defines astroturf as a “grassroots program that involves the instant manufacturing of public support for a point of view in which either uninformed activists are recruited or means of deception are used to recruit them.” 

The sleazy route involves silencing the people and their opinions. Monopolising every opinion making and communication avenue, controlling every social space… continually drumming the desired information… and finally buying off anyone who may have or could potentially have reasons for feeling free to have an opinion and much worse capacity and means to share that opinion with the public…in the Eritrean context…these dots join to make a picture of the monstrosity commonly known as PFDJ… Astroturfing of Eritrean public space in the post independence era has meant eroding every thing Eritrean off its ability to have and express needs and wants and the freedom to mobilise to have these needs met, including in the diaspora where ‘to be an Eritrean’ means to have fulfilled all PFDJ prescribed obligations…written… and unwritten, including the not airing of views that are not sanctioned by PFDJ… sure PFDJ can mobilise crowds and sure PFDJ can choreograph the crowd and make it appear as though there is a cross section of every diversity group imaginable and some completely unimaginable (I still get the jitters when I remember the camels assembled in a military precision the day PIA happened to be on the southern Region and there was a spontaneous mass showdown of support for him and against the sanctions… man, woman and beasts were ‘spontaneously’  arranged in military precision that would make the film directors of Hollywood go green with envy…) or even the spectacular spectacles of my friends the Spartans without boarder who ‘spontaneously’ took to the streets of their nearest PFDJ hotspot capital of the region… there priests and pop stars led their flock in an act of delirious pandemonium… trouble is it only looks like grassroots support until any one of those assembled (camels and mules included) opens their mouth…the mothers on the street of Geneva were there because a country called sanctions was going to invade Eritrea and that cute nine year old boy was propped on his dad’s shoulders convinced that Susan rise and Barack Obama missed a trick or two here and if they could see how cute we were they would not let us be invaded by sanctions… but neither the little boy nor his dad or the women who look like his grandmothers would put their lives in the hands of the regime they so support; for love or money… they do not passionately believe in the world that PFDJ is trying bring forth… not enough to compel them to go and live there anyway…if you want to test this go back to the wedding scenario (gosh .. at this rate I am not going to be invited to any weddings next season, am I?) and announce that PFDJ died last night and Eritrea is ‘under new administration’ … no one is going to worry about the social change projects… many would probably celebrate the demise of the ghastly regime and few would worry about their stake there… but I can guarantee that no one would shed a drop of tear for the principles PFDJ was promoting or for the policies that they were trying to implement or the objectives they were aspiring to… now compare that to the reaction that the news of the demise of the pre independence organisations would have generated (in the case of ELF... did generate)… the later is how a true grassroots movement would react… the former is the fate of an Astroturfed movement and especially a sleazily astroturfed movement… 

I don’t expect anything better from PFDJ and PFDJ has nothing but more misery to mobilise the public with… and hence it has no choice but to regurgitate old slogans and pry on the vulnerabilities of people to give itself the semblance of an organisation that has some grassroots support… but what is gut wrenching, is to see that the movement that has defined itself against all odds, in support of the Eritrean public’s rights to a democratic and just society going the same route of astroturfing in place of cultivating a grassroots following; and to add insult to injury my lot, over at the Eritrean resistance, are attempting a lazy astroturfing project, where the patchy turf is so unreal that its only purpose seems to be showing the fault lines in the movement… it was really better when we claimed we have few but committed following; a classic example of this is how there are so many political organisations all convinced (and at pains to convince) that they are the true voice of the ‘people’… fact is not many out there in the real world, knows their programmes or objectives and who leads them or even what they are called! I bet if a member of the public (minus us politicos that is!) was told that these organisations simply vanished off the face of the planate, at best the reaction would be: ayneberana aytefeana! 

Things are not that different for the ‘civic’ organisations, either… the strongest and more organised ones have a good charter (or other governing documents by a different name), and extremely hard working group of people, who can be counted on the fingers of a single hand (often), so much so that often if there is a family wedding for a member, events have to be cancelled (did I say wedding again?... do I worry you guys as much as I worry myself sometimes?)… the rest of the public doesn’t know anything about our precious organisations and what it is they are meant to achieve… that is a tragedy only surpassed by our lazy approach to overcoming the tragedy… trying to lazily Astroturf over the sparsely turfed ‘grassroots’ i.e. simply representing ourselves and our four to five committed members as ‘the grass roots’… Now before you all go out counting and double counting members, supporters, followers and adherents…on the books just do a quick count of the people who you know would turn up to a protest rally without you having to coax them… now count the ones who will turn up with a home made plaque card and offer to steward the event… and then count those that will be willing to print off publicity material and distribute them at venues frequented by Eritreans… if you still have more than a handful you really have a promising grass roots organisation of committed people who are willing to organise themselves around a issue of passionate concern… 

Lazily, instead of trying to galvanise grassroots following, the Eritrean Democratic Alliance, just elevated entities, including slapdash paltalk discussion forums and organisations without any members let alone grassroots following and passed them off as the ‘public’ for the purposes of a pioneer and much needed national dialogue… these people have no way of now coming back to the rest of us to implement the resolutions of the conference… they don’t represent anything but themselves and themselves alone! 

… the pain is double, as back in 2009 in Addis I really thought the Alliance was gearing up to cultivating a grassroots following in the Eritrean diaspora by taking the initiative to include people who were traditionally not associated with EDA; academics, intellectuals, individual activists, young people, women religious leaders, media organisations… everyone was supposed to be encouraged to join a movement for democratic changes in Eritrea in preparation for National Conference for Democratic Changes in Eritrea… everyone was due to contribute their ideas… I distinctly remember people discussing the gaps and how to bridge them… we were going to look different we were going to look stronger… we were going to have mechanisms for those who are not currently engaged in the struggle for change (the silent majority, and those working on their own without being part of an organisation) to have their voices heard… we were going to reach hard to reach groups…. We were going to send messages directly to the people inside the country we were going to make Eritreans imagine change and work towards making that a reality…. We ended up with a National Conference that totally confused that image and showed the entire movement for what it is… a patchily astroturfed movement that can only make noise from within a gated compound of a borrowed hall, lent courtesy of a ‘friendly’ government with its own priorities and preferences. That for me is at the heart of what is wrong with the Movement for Democratic Changes in Eritrea…. And it is minus this mass following/ passionate interest/ active engagement that we are attempting to discuss method of struggle, transitional arrangements, fate of the 1998 constitution etc etc etc… and oh yes Government in exile… how do we hope to be representative of an entire nation when we can’t even represent and be a voice for our refugee communities who refuse to have anything to do with us… before we contemplate a government in exile… before we begin to think about constitution drafting…. Before we postulate around interim arrangements in the event of change and way before we decide to accept the direct involvement of foreign governments we need to get the support and committed following (the blessing)  of our people, otherwise all of the above become mere philosophical titbits. A question to all the leaders of our struggle for Democratic Change before they put themselves forward as engineers of the change, should be… how much influence… real influence… do you command? How many people would respond to your call to organise around an issue? How many people would implement the action plan that comes out of your deliberations? in other words how many people do you represent really represent? 

…a failure to have legitimate grassroots movements will land us in a situation where people/groups who don’t represent anyone or any real voice attempt to ram their version of changes down our throats and by force if necessary… and hence my message to the still silent majority is if you care enough to see change in Eritrea, roll your sleeves and work for that change… failing that we are going to continue to live between those who would beg borrow or steal our voices (and silences) and use it to bring forth the kind of change that would serve their purpose.