The Eritrean Federalist Papers

Abstract

After the American colonies broke away from Britain, they wrote the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union: the first American Constitution. Soon, many politicians of that time felt that the colonies need a stronger central government than the Articles of Confederation provided for. This led to the adoption of the Constitution of the United States of America which was to be ratified by conventions at least in 9 of the 13 States before it becomes the supreme law of the land. Ratification was not an easy task. The America Federalist Papers, a series of 85 essays advocating the ratification of the United States Constitution, are historical documents.

Even though in a less impressive language, less humility, less coherence and less tenacity, the 1997 Constitution of Eritrea has been a subject of a heated debate among Eritreans. There are Eritreans who strongly oppose the document and they continued doing so even at the time the defiant government who supervised the drafting process set a time for implementation. Motivated by the need to bridge gaps in the interests of the country, as of 2001 many Eritrean scholars and political activists started calling the opposition in exile to accept the Constitution. All the authors of the papers in this compilation are not necessarily federalists and the compiled papers are by no means all the commentaries on the Constitution. The compilation is hoped to be helpful in not only presenting in a unified text one side of the argument, but also in making available some of the essays which are no more available at the domain where they were initially posted.