Over the past few days, the PFDJ has been making a big deal about the graduation of the 20th round ‘national service’ in its website (www.shaebia.org) and the local newspapers (accessible at www.shabait.com). There, we observe snapshots of the president awarding merit graduating soldiers. The event made me rewind my memories to the dozen or more graduation ceremonies of the University of Asmara and the annual excuses that the [state] president delivered through his former education minister, Mr. Osman Saleh, for not being able to make it and for his failure to award the outstanding graduates for their greater achievements.

It is such a paradox that the president has the time and energy to travel all the way to Sawa and very much tied up to drive few miles to the gates of the University of Asmara. What coincidences that the University was only graduating all its young and bright academicians when the diary of the president was just overbooked! Wait a minute; didn’t he publicly declare that "So far the University [of Asmara] has only been producing self-obsessed people”? Then why on earth would one ever expect him to celebrate and cap the “selfish” graduates? If this was in his mind, why even bothered to send ‘apologies’ for successively missing graduations towards “self-obsession”?

Despite Isaias’s lunatic description, the university has in fact been producing dedicated leaders who are fighting for social and political equity as elaborated in my upcoming article (“University of Asmara: The incubator of Activists”; Ghebremariam YT; Unpublished). But for now, I would like to share my thoughts on the two independent excerpts taken from the interviews of the awarded soldiers as displayed in the July 11, 2007 article published on www.shaebia.org under the title “Sawa: a place where competence is built”. In the article, one of the interviewees said “when we were in Asmara, we used to hear some people describe Sawa as a place of hardship and all other negative things. Some also advised us not to come here.” and the other one confessed “In Asmara, if you ask someone about Sawa, he/she gives you negative comments”. So, according to the writer, if Sawa is a place “where competence is built” then why would “some people” utter “negative things” about it? Who wouldn’t want to go to a place where competence is genuinely built? Why would people advise their fellow citizens not to go there? And how many are the “some people”?

I think it is proper to visualize the statements in the background of the glorious popularity and striking mass support that the boot camp enjoyed at its infancy. It was not uncommon to hear a  young man say “Let me be first and you follow next” to his biological brother/sister and the brother/sister to fight back and say “No! Let me go first!” So, what has really changed that people are advising/warning their fellow citizens “not to go there”? Did the place suddenly turn into hell? Or is the perception of the public changing?

As far back as the boot camp operated, it is unlikely that the eroding nature of the military commanders has changed from bad to ugly. I unequivocally believe that the dynamics of civic awareness is growing. The oppressed are gradually but surely despising the regime and sending out the message of non-cooperation. This infiltrating civic disobedience campaign is one of the ingredients that the opposition camps are striving to implant in the hearts of the oppressed in order to demolish injustice and secure a democratic nation.