In a congratulatory message on the re-elections of Mr.Christian Levrat to the presidency of the Swiss Social Democratic Party (SP/PS), the Eritrean People's Democratic Party (EPDP) seized the opportunity to call upon the fraternal Swiss party to put pressure on the Swiss government to stop contemplating resumption of technical assistance for and "partnership" with Africa's most repressive regime under the pretext of non-existing "positive signals" from Asmara.
Mr. Levrat, who was first elected at the young age of 36 in 2008 to lead Switzerland's second largest party, again won re-election last weekend with a renewed social-political programme for his third term. Founded 128 years ago, the party is known by the abbreviations of SP in German and PS in French/Italian/Romansh languages of the country. Both EPDP and the Swiss party are affiliated to the Socialist International and the Progressive Alliance.
The EPDP congratulatory message, dated 9 December 2016, saluted SP/PS's right understanding of what is going on in Eritrea and the role of its parliamentary members in trying to depict to the Swiss people and authorities the correct picture in Eritrea. Yet, the memo did not hide the deep concerns of Eritreans about the dangerous compromises being made in favour of dictatorships springing from the simplistic aim of stopping flow of refugees to Europe.
The message pointed out the recent statement of intention by the Swiss foreign ministry hinting at a plan to start "pilot projects" with the regime at the cost of about US$2 million. The objective appeared to re-launching a large-scale development programme "if conditions improve" in Eritrea. It is to be recalled that it was 10 years that Switzerland stopped assistance to the Eritrean regime because of its bad human rights record.
The EPDP memorandum clarified that nothing is improving to the better in Eritrea for Switzerland to resume partnership with Asmara regime. For this reason, the memo urged the fraternal Swiss party to continue opposing the wrong intentions of the Swiss government, and stressed that SP/PS should instead promote the modest requests for action as listed below: