I arrived at a launch of this so obviously over funded government initiative wearing a pair of insufferably high heels (atleast for me!) and an equally implausible pencil skirt (…well the shindig was in the city and I thought I had to make an effort!)…first I was given a glossy report… followed by a tiny plate of intricately arranged mini canapés followed by a glass of suitably chilled tall glass of bubbly…. So I tucked the report under my arms and did my best impression of elegantly holding a plate on one hand a glass on the other… with my feet screaming and unable to neither take more than a quarter of a step at a time…nor eat the food infront of me or drink without risking a total collapse of the living statue I had become…all the time trying to make small  but intelligent sounding talk…  (I felt like…a mermaid on high hills and with both hands tied in front of her at a 90 degree angle to her torso….) and voila…. I suddenly understood the impossible position that the EU and GOE supporters find themselves…in an extremely uncomfortable posture with both their hands and feet disabled by a series of moves they each took to appease the GOE respectively…

There is a petition drive that is being driven by biddho.com, organisers say the objectives are  to;  express unequivocal support to the Eritrean Government in securing the AID and thereby enable it to achieve its development goals. The petition is also a collective call to urge the EU to continue its partnership with Eritrea. Additionally, to ensure that this noble and timely cause achieve its intended goals…

Like me at the party the organisers of this petition must understand the triple jeopardy peril that they are in…on the one hand there is their needing to be seen to be expressing their unequivocal support for everything and anything (and this time it happens to be seeking donations) that the government does or doesn’t do… forgetting they thus far had been singing ‘self sufficiency’ and would have been claiming that Eritrea didn’t receive any foreign donations… (Bitsifrna! they would say)… with the same unequivocal tone that they are supporting the GOE to secure millions of Euros worth of aid… i say they either have a very short memory or they think we all have a very short attention span and hence don’t notice their unequivocal voices quivering on the margins…. 

Secondly (on their other hand) there is the agreements that GOE must make with the EU inorder to secure the AID (their capitalizations not mine)… you see the EU happen to think that Democratic Governance and Human Rights are key for sustainable development and this is a central point made in the EU Africa strategy that sets out the criteria for all developmental aid… and taken together their support for the government of Eritrea’s stand of permanently postponing democratic elections and implementation of a ratified constitution, indefinitely detaining people incommunicado… shutting churches and throwing people into container cells… definitively silencing the free media…..instituting a system of forced militarization and endless cycle of forced labour on Eritrean youth etc etc makes it impossible for them to be effective in calling for the EU to enable Eritrea to attain development within the framework of these aid packages….their stand is incompatible with their call…

And now for their third peril…they can’t evidence progress and/or development in Eritrea quiet in the same way that the EU told us they were looking at development… everything about the EU aid framework is about outcomes and not necessarily outputs… which leaves the GOE with a number of roads, buildings , bridges and microdams in their hands… suspended at a 90 degree angle to the rest of their record i.e. human and democratic rights in Eritrea…. Like the food and drink at my cocktail party… the Eritrean public is unable to enjoy any of the fruits of these intricately arranged goodies on the GOE’s platter served courtesy of the EU and other donors… the outflow of refugees is but one example of the none-stakeholdership of Eritreans….

By the same token the EU must find itself in a similarly impossible position… where on the one hand it has openly and copiously declared the fact that; promotion of human rights and democracy has become an extremely well integrated element of EU external relations policy, with multiple references to it at various institutional levels and having made lofty agreements linking human rights, democracy and development intricately and having agreed on the need for meaningful ongoing dialogue on issues of mutual concerns and having pledged that they would work resolutely to support the elimination of all forms of discrimination based particularly on origin, sex, race, language and religion it now finds itself having to justify aid packages where nearly every single one of these agreements have been brazenly trampled upon.

Whilst on the other hand…. The commission goes out on a limb in the hope that PIA and his government would somehow become part of the solution for the  snowballing problem that threatens to engulf the horn of Africa with dire consequences for everyone else... completing EU’s perfect knot.... of attempting to engage a government showing no evidence of engageability, using aid that should only be given where meaningful engagement is evidenced.    

After I stood with both hands in mid air holding food and drink that I could not eat or drink, for what seemed like eternity a waitress approached the people around me offering second glasses of bubbly (others seemed to have no problems; eating, drinking and talking…) I took the opportunity to place my untouched glass on her tray and freeing one  hand… shifting my priorities to being able to eat something… anything... on the platter of mini delights… in the same way EU and GOE supporters will have free themselves of the massive contradictions and reconsider their priorities; if Biddho et al want to continue to prioritise supporting the GOE regardless of the positions it takes they will have to place aid packages based on outcomes related to human and democratic rights back on the tray… similarly if the EU want to continue to promote human rights, democracy and justice  it should prioritise that and place PIA back in the darkened corner that he has painted himself into, through his actions that are not compatible with any of the provisions of the agreements that frame EU external relations.