I thought today I would take the time to respond to some comments from another blog that I happened upon. The post that I had commented on was about Eritrea and Ethiopia’s less than neighborly relations for the past decade. I thought that part of the original post were ill-informed, as were some of the comments, however, because I believe in not being too judgmental, engage in the conversation. Impressively the original author responded to my comments with more depth than I expected (a wonderful surprise), however, I disagreed further with his statements. Careful not to start a blogging war I decided it would be best to create a far more in depth post here because the information will hopefully be instructive to a much larger audience.
It is a curious suggestion that, “…the only time in our history we Eritreans openly and freely discussed the future of our nation publicly was during the British Administration or pre-1952.” (Let the Dialogue Begin: A Passionate Call to ‘Eritrean Intellectuals’) This is a sad recollection of our most recent past. Undoubtedly this suggests that the author (and more broadly those who did not participate in the constitutional congress) ignore the key to representative governance, and at its heart democracy.