Alternative Eritrea: What If G-15 Had Evaded The Guillotine

Of all the “What If” books, my favorite is “The Man in the High Castle” by Philip K Dick.  It explores an alternate world (actually, an alternate America) where the Axis Powers (Germany and Japan) had won World War II.  People who live in this terrible world are looking for a book “The Grasshopper Lies Heavy” which will tell them, no, actually The Allies won.  What if the G-15 Evaded The Guillotine and the alternative future of Eritrea is all chronicled in a book called “The Baobab Dreams Deep“, where the G-15 triumph and bring forth an Eritrea vastly different from the current version bestowed upon us by G-1?

Party, People, Prison

In the real version, the story is depressing.  The G-15, write an open letter to Party Members in May 2001.  They follow it up with an Open Letter to the Eritrean People in August 2001.  They are disappeared by the Abductor-in-Chief in September 2001.

Letter to Party Members:  It’s May 2001. A Cessation of Hostilities Agreement had been signed with Ethiopia eleven months earlier.  For eleven months, individuals who would later coalesce to the G-15 are writing the President letters asking to meet.  Can we meet? Come on.  He ignores them and, in one case, he dispenses with his patented rhetorical nonsense which, to his supporters, is the art of koan as practiced by a Zen.  One of them (either General Oqbe or General Berhane) writes him, “Hey, Comrade Isaias, people are saying you have changed.”  Isaias answers: “Who is saying I changed? What does change mean? What is the purpose of this emotional question?”

So, they issue their Open Letter To PFDJ Members.   We tried to keep it within the Central Council but we had no luck: so we are appealing to you, the grassroots.  All 1.65 million of you, which was what PFDJ used to claim as its membership.  From a population of 3 million.   This was decades before Ethiopia’s Abiy Ahmed said his party, Prosperity Party, has 16.5 million members, by far the largest in Africa.  So, although back in 2001 Abiy Ahmed was only 25, he had already been a military veteran for 11 years, having enlisted at 14, as a child soldier, I mean a fighter, for EPRDF, the coalition TPLF put together to successfully overthrow the Derg, currently his most loyal constituents.

What does this have anything to do with G-15? Look it is my book, my rules.  If I write the story well enough (this is the first draft), Abi will appear later, as some comic book villain.

Back to Eritrea.   The G-15 said “Let’s meet, let’s talk, let’s dig our way out of the war debris.” Their document had five Chapters: The ELF Years (1961-1969);  The Preliminary Stage Years (1970-76); The Good Old Days (1977-1991); The Transitional Period (1991-1997), and The Post Constitution-Ratification Period (1997-2000).  The tone the G-15 used was very Central-Counselish–formal, patriotic, conciliatory, avoiding direct personal attacks.  Regardless of its tone, the G-15 had committed the original sin: creating a counternarrative. The Divine Right of Prophet Isaias to Narrate and Curate stories was being challenged by the G-15, in collaboration with their confederates in the “so-called” free press.  Everything is “so-called” if it doesn’t conform, by the way.

At this point in the book, we introduce a new character: the Divinely-Chosen Isaias Afwerki.  He has been told What A Great Leader he was since he was 25.  He looks younger than his age: 55. He is tall, hyperenergetic, and he can out-talk you–his confidence comes from 30 years of kicking ass.  He knew it, they knew it, the people knew it: he is by far the best qualified for the office of the presidency, but some still have not adjusted from the years when they called him Comrade: I am President now.  This Front has been for the Proletariat most of its life, it only swerved to the neo-liberalism side briefly (The G-15’s Good Ol’ Days) when the USSR died, but the foundation and core of this Front is Dictatorship of the Proletariat, and Proletariat is optional.

His group, the G-1, an assortment of The Hyper-Ambitious, “The Never G-15!” Comrades,  and Pedestrian Opportunists who controlled the meeting calendar realized, well they realized they have everything.   This is a book, and books have dialogues, and here comes a story from my dad.  (Again, it is my book.)  The G-15 are soliciting support for their petition.  And the interrogation goes exactly like this:

[Old Man, in Tigre Language]: “ኣምን ምስልኩም ህለው? Are the Security forces on your side?”
[G-15 Smiling] No!
Old Man: How about the armed forces?
G-15: Not at all!
Old Man: The police? 
G-15: No!
Old Man: So only God is with you?
G-15: Laughs.

The G-1 don’t just have the Power of Scheduling Meetings, but they also hold the power (not the right, but the power) to decide whom to invite to the meeting, too.  The signatories go all the way up to 19, before falling off to 15.  The counter-offensive had started.

Letter to the Eritrean People: It’s early August 2001, twenty-four years ago. Having waited for more than two months for a positive response from the G-1, the G-15 write “An Open Letter to the Eritrean People” where they detail what they had intended to discuss as a Way Out of the Crisis if the G-1 had convened the Central Committee meeting and the National Parliament meeting.

The crisis? What crisis? Well, kids, after the 1998-00 Eritrea-Ethiopia “Border” War, there was massive internal displacement, at its peak: 1.1 million Eritreans were displaced!  A 25-kilometer (artillery range) buffer zone was created, entirely inside Eritrea, with Blue Helmets soon coming.  The “Senseless War” had done great damage to Eritrea and Eritreans, something the Short Memory Habesha People should remind themselves about as they prep for another war.

The G-15 proposed a detailed plan:

1. Ensure the President is governed by the constitution and the law, and that legislative and executive branches perform their legal functions properly.
2. Place confidence in PFDJ members and the general public, allowing them to exercise their right to participate in open discussions of important national issues.
3. Hold regular and emergency meetings of the legislative and executive organs of the PFDJ and the government, and ensure they exercise their powers.
4. Discuss and review the past seven years’ experiences of the PFDJ and the government in open forums with wide public participation, utilizing lessons learned for the future.
5. Proclaim the law of party formation and allow parties to form, encouraging them to compete peacefully and freely.
6. Conduct free and fair elections for the Fourth Party Congress, and democratically decide the future of the PFDJ as a political party/organization governed by the same party laws to be proclaimed.
7. Ensure assurances are in place for free and fair national elections, and quickly take preparatory steps including:
   Proclamation of election law.
   Proclamation of party law.
   Formation of an Electoral Commission.
8. Assure the impartiality of the mass media to encourage the protection of human rights, freedom of expression, and political discourse.
9. Allow and encourage the formation and freedom of action of civic organizations.
10. Dismantle the Special Courts.
11. Bring those imprisoned for a long time without a court order before a regular court of law.
12. Guarantee the independence of the judiciary.
13. Establish participatory procedures to formulate clear and declared policies to address the gap in the standard of living and lack of job and educational opportunities in different localities and communities.
14. Form committees accountable to the Central and National Councils to conduct discussions on the seven-year experience of the PFDJ and the government, as starting points for the front’s congress and the constitutional government to be established after elections.
15. Provide draft legislation for elections and political parties for discussion by the people, gather opinions, and bring finalized drafts to the National Council for ratification.
16. Ensure elections for the Front’s congress and the constitutional government are free and fair, with guarantees that the Election Commission shall be impartial.
17. Respect the letter and spirit of the Press Law, confirm the independence of the judiciary, and ensure the government operates under a declared and open annual budget.
18. Create an independent body including members of the general public to investigate every member of the Central and National Councils for accountability in performance of duties, handling of financial records, and morality, with accusations handled openly in Council meetings and through due process of law if necessary.
19. Hold meetings of legislative branches at regular times and whenever emergency meetings are requested, as decided in previous sessions (e.g., eighth and ninth sessions of the Central Council).
20. Form a committee to study policies, decision-making processes, method of work, distribution of authority, and accountability and control in the PFDJ and the government, as decided in the eighth and ninth sessions of the Central Council.
21. Form a committee to investigate allegations of violation of the rights of a Central Committee member, as decided in the eighth and ninth sessions.
22. Accelerate resolution of issues of land allocation, as decided in the eighth and ninth sessions.
23. Regulate and improve the salaries of military personnel, as decided in the eighth and ninth sessions.
24. Ensure people’s complaints are heard and resolved, as decided in the eighth and ninth sessions.
25. Make government media effective and invite wide participation, as decided in the eighth and ninth sessions.
26. Ensure internal democracy in the PFDJ, as decided in the eighth and ninth sessions.
27. Commence preparation necessary for the implementation of the constitution and work in accordance with legal procedures, as decided in the eighth and ninth sessions.
28. Form a committee to review in detail the conduct of the war with the Woyane and the peace process, and advise the President on the same in the future, as decided in the eighth and ninth sessions.
29. Hold national elections on the basis of the constitution no later than the end of 2001, and declare the laws governing the formation of political parties, as decided in the thirteenth session.

Party, People, Participation

In the depressing version, Party, People is followed by Prison. On September 18, 2001, all the G-15 members and all private media journalists were abducted, and disappeared. In the alternative version, the People rallied behind the G-15 (Participation) and this was our timeline:

1. The Constitution was ratified.
2. The Electoral and Party formation laws were made official.
3. Amendments were made to the Constitution to make it more inclusive.
4. Eritrea’s first national election of 2001 was followed by contested elections in 2006, 2011, 2016 and 2021.  With each election, the country perfected its democracy.
5. Democracies don’t go to war, so Eritrea was spared from all the wars since 2000.
6. Eritrea believed in diplomacy and avoiding being entangled in other countries’ politics, so it was never sanctioned.
7. There was a limit to National Service, so the exile rate was significantly reduced.
8. There was land reform, granting people ownership of their land, so the economy improved.  The exiles returned.
9. There was a vibrant free press so scandals, corruption and cronyism was exposed.
10. All the political prisoners were released, with a governmental taskforce assigned to compensate them and their families for their loss.

You can read more about it in my new book The Baobab Dreams Deep.   You may say, well, this is escaping reality.  No more so than living under one of the worst governments in the world and pretending everything is just fine. Social scientists tell us that a population that lives under a brutal authoritarianism eventually adopts all the traits of the tyrant–cruel, exclusionary and prone to violence.  Maybe it is time they are reminded that is not what Eritrea is; it’s just what it has become under President Isaias Afwerki.