President Isaias continues to sabotage his own ‘vision’

Feb 18, 2011

(MoFA,Feb 18, 2011)- After a prolonged absence of several weeks, President Isaias finally reappeared before Eritrean TV but only to make an unusually brief speech commemorating the capture of Massawa 21 years ago by the EPLF forces. His appearance, following a two-week absence in Qatar, is widely believed to have been intended to placate supporters seriously worried by his long absence from public view. Whatever the reasons for his disappearance, President Isaias didn’t seem to relish his return to the screen as much as usual. If his unusually ultra-brief speech was any indicator, the days appear to be gone when he insisted on bending the ears of his audience with repeated stories of miraculous wonders yet to come in Eritrea as a result of his government’s vision and hard work. The Eritrean leader has always had a weakness for superlatives and long-drawn-out speeches particularly when it comes to describing his still unrealized dreams and visions, or when he has felt the need to chastise people for complaining of broken promises. Now long-winded speeches have apparently been dropped. This year, the President even dropped his traditional marathon New Year address for the first time in 20 years. His speech at Massawa was another indication of the president’s new-found distaste for long-winded lectures. Perhaps, even President Isaias has realized the futility of daily efforts at conjuring up pink elephants for a jaded public which has long been feeling the stinging bite of reality at firsthand.

Then again, old habits do die hard. It may have been an unusually brief speech but President Isaias still managed to sneak in his usual we-shall-overcome mantra, though this time it was firmly referenced to the particular town of Massawa as opposed to Eritrea at large. Indeed, he was his old self when he praised the port city for having paved “the way for total liberation” of Eritrea promising that it would “become the hub of investment for national development, as well as for regional and international trade and investment, thus symbolizing the mark of our pledge and progress.” To a casual listener, the words might sound like the optimistic remarks of a well-intentioned leader giving his wide-eyed audience a preview of the great days to come. The residents of Massawa know better. They have heard the same words every February while their town has seen anything but progress. For believers in the power of positive thinking, President Isaias’ generous hopes for Massawa might just be meant to add colour to the actual ongoing efforts, however modest, to develop the town, to ready the town’s port facilities for the business activities he assures his audience Massawa will shortly have – as a hub for regional and international trade.

It’s an impressive vision, but a vision is only a mirage without some solid base. Visions, however powerful, are not necessarily reliable pointers to actual development. As one commentator remarked, while visions may reflect one’s basic faith in matters of politics, they cannot account for many specifics in the actual complexity of political life. This is the case of President Isaias’ ‘hallucinatory fantasies’ for the port of Massawa. Ports are not like military camps, where you can bring fighters from all over the world to receive all sorts of training, something that President Isaias’ government has now made its principal export trade. A port can only become a hub for international or regional trade as long as there are people in the region or more widely who are prepared to do business with it. Equally, it needs the government controlling the port to take the idea of good neighbourliness and normal behaviour of international relations seriously. On both counts President Isaias’ government has failed for as long as Eritrea has been independent. No country that has gone to war with all of its neighbours can realistically expect its ports to be the hub of regional trade. International trade is unthinkable without a nation showing willingness to subscribe to the ordinary applicable notions of international law including those covering business transactions. If there is anything that Eritrea is particularly famous for today, it is for defying the norms of international relations. The very ports that could have earned Eritrea billions of dollars over the last two decades now lie empty and barren because its relations with all potential trade partners are frosty at best. President Isaias has no one to blame for this but himself.

For all the positive notes that President Isaias tried to strike during his Massawa speech, there is little chance Massawa can become a vibrant port again unless and until his government mends fences with its neighbours. It is obvious that Eritrea’s ports are of no real use for either Djibouti or Sudan. The only significant possibility for Eritrea’s ports to become a hub for regional or international trade lies in restoring Eritrea’s relations with Ethiopia amicably. Ethiopia’s growing economy is quite obviously the best opportunity for President Isaias to realize his ‘vision’. The supreme irony is that this is exactly the last thing the regime in Asmara is prepared to do. President Isaias would rather let his whole nation collapse than take even the smallest steps to normalize relations with Ethiopia. Indeed, buried beneath the brevity of his recent remarks and his ‘visions’ for Massawa lies his equally strong proclivity to contradict himself. Therein lies the paradox: President Isaias, as always, sabotages his own grand designs more effectively than anyone else.