Eritrea - Ministry of Information

Boldness is required

So yes, boldness is required. Writing about the environment in 1974, Andre Gorz called for “a multi-level political attack to wrest (from capitalism) control of operations and to counter with a completely different plan for society and civilization.” He explained it was important to avoid environmental reform bought at the expense of social conditions: “The environmental struggle may create difficulties for capitalism and force it to change; but when, having long resisted through force of cunning, it finally yields because the environmental impasse has become unavoidable, it will incorporate this constraint as it has incorporated past constraints … people’s buying power will be squeezed and everything will happen as though the cost of fighting pollution were charged on the resources which people had to buy products.” Since then, the resilience of the system has been shown in the creation of a market to fight pollution. In Shenzhen, low-polluting businesses sell others the right to exceed their statutory quota. Meanwhile, polluted air is killing more than a million Chinese every year.

It is five years since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, on 15 September 2008. Since then, the legitimacy of capitalism as a way of organizing society has been undermined; its promises of prosperity, social mobility and democracy have lost credibility. But there has been no radical change. The system has repeatedly come under fire, but it has survived. Part of the price for capitalism’s failures has been the end of some social advances previously wrested from it. “Free-market fundamentalists have been wrong about everything-yet they now dominate the political scene more thoroughly than ever,” wrote the US economist Paul Krugman. But the system is still holding up, even if on autopilot, and that is not to the credit of its opponents. What has happened? What can be done about it?

Today the 40^th anniversary of Bologna has kicked off with vibrant participation of Eritreans from all walks of life and age and from all corners of the world. For many the occasion would be a platform to go back to the early days of the festival and remember the happy days, the days of determination of every one participant to contribute his/her part in the Eritrean struggle for independence, and above all the unity of the Eritrean people that has been demonstrated there. And some are there to learn and listen to what has been going on in Bologna festival in the days of the armed struggle, the role of Eritreans in Diaspora, Eritrean nationals coming together in one compound in the city to discuss the objective situation in the field and their contribution towards the armed struggle. Indeed they have a lot to learn and gain experience that could add impetus to their ongoing role in the process of nation building.

Why Nations Fail offers case studies to illustrate these points: the economic rises and subsequent decline of the Soviet Union and the Ottoman Empire; the resistance of the tsarist Russia and the Habsburg Empire to building railroads, out of fear that they would undermine the landed aristocracy’s power and foster revolution, and, especially relevant today, the likely future trajectory of Communist China, whose growth prospects appear unlimited to many Western observers, but not to Acemoglu and Robinson, who write the China’s growth “is likely to run out of steam.”

A young Eritrean that was born in the US once said, "When I hear people call Eritrea a new nation, it startles me because I grew knowing Eritrea to be a nation." Most Eritrean children that grew up in the US before independence have encountered people that told them Eritrea does not exist on the map. Their answers were always that Eritrea existed in their heart and they knew that she will be free.

Democracy means different things to different cultures and mostly contested term and it is often more in name only than genuine. Democracy as we see it in the developing nations has lead to blunder, ethnic killing and religious war. Eritrea wants none of this nonsense. Eritrea’s governance is based on equality, justice, diversity in unity and quality of life. Political reforms include more substantive principle.  What we need is Governance with constitutional constraints, tailored to local realities and a government that is devoted to its people and increase opportunity. Eritrea does have leaders, institutions, social forces and effective, efficient and genuine leadership with high administrative skill to bring the nation into prospers civil and modern nation.