Click Gene Sharp to read this short and quite easy to read book, entitled From Dictatorship to Democracy, 2002.
Below are some quotations from the book.
p.5. Dictators are not in the business of allowing elections that could remove them from their thrones.
p. 6. Usually, no foreign saviors are coming, and if a foreign state does intervene, it probably should not be trusted. With respect to this issue one of four points made includes:
Foreign states also may be willing to sell out an oppressed people instead of keeping pledges to assist their liberation at the cost of another objective.
P.11. When the issues at stake are fundamental,..., issues of human freedom, or the whole future development of the society, negotiations do not provide a way of reaching a mutually satisfactory solution. On some basic issues there should be no compromise.
p. 13. Resistance, not negotiations, is essential for change where fundamental issues are at stake.
Further, democratic negotiators, or foreign negotiation specialists accepted to assist in negotiations , may in a single stroke provide the dictators with the domestic and international legitimacy that they have been previously denied because of their seizure of the state, human rights violations, and brutalities.
p.23. Here 17 possible weaknesses of dictators at which they could be attacked are enumerated. [ HG's comment. Donor governments have provided funds to the budget of the EPRDF to sustain the dictatorship. That should be an 18th point of weakness that the opposition should exploit . Ethiopians in the Diaspora should campaign to cause western democracies not to support a dictatorship. Also Kinjit should ask for a direct aid from donors to run Addis Ababa to which the EPRDF dictatorship has already denied resources. Kinjit must ask for funds from the donors, and if the donors do not give funds it should make that fact known to Ethiopians. The donor governments should be exposed to Ethiopians for what they are.]
p. Nonviolent methods and disciplines are grouped into three categories.
1. Protest and persuasion,
2. Noncooperation.
3. Intervention
p.29. Secrecy, deception, and underground conspiracy pose very difficult problems for a movement using nonviolent action,
Strategies should be dynamic to meet the shifting power relations.
p.30. The following four mechanism of change are provided.
1. Nonversion. Participants believe in the rightness of the cause, and changing the conflict situation and the society
2. Accommodation
3. Nonviolent coercion
p. 34. Ch. 6. The need for strategic planning
p.38. Four important terms in strategic planning.
1. Grand strategy (or goal)
2. Strategy- how best to achieve an objective of the Grand strategy (goal)
p.40 3. Tactics. skillful use one's forces to achieve parts of a strategy
4. Method. refers to specific weapons or means of action
Chpater seven- Planning strategy
p. 43. External assistance. In the design of the grand strategy relative roles of internal persistence and external pressures for disintegrating the dictatorship should be assesses.
p. 49. Adhering to strategic plan.
p. 53. Spreading responsibilities
P. 58. Escalating freedom.
4. Disintegration.
