Yonas Biru, PhD

The article titled “Did a Nobel Peace Laureate Stoke a Civil War?” heralds everything that is wrong with the way the Prime Minister (PM) is running the country. What is sadder is that he is a visionary leader who could transform the nation, but his management is nothing short of dysfunctional. He is leading a profoundly visionary reform but the little things that are not managed right are undermining his reforms that were once seen by the international community as transformative not only for Ethiopia but also for continental Africa.

The Newspaper coverage has three problems. First it was a missed opportunity. The PM could have used the opportunity to articulate Ethiopia’s geopolitical narrative and refute false narratives that have become the staple of the international media.

The second problem involves statements that were shocking. Let me use two examples. The first was beneath the office of the Prime Minister. It read: “I was the one who would send intelligence from this part of the world to the N.S.A., on Sudan and Yemen and Somalia. The N.S.A. knows me. I would fight and die for America.”

The third problem is that it lacked diplomatic norms and etiquette befitting the PM’s position. The journalist wrote: “He told me that he had ‘taken a big intake of breath’ when he heard that Joe Biden had fallen off his bicycle. “I wish he acted his age,” he said. He went on, ‘Obama was good at making inspiring speeches, but he made more promises than he could fulfill.’ Abiy grimaced when I asked about Donald Trump. ‘He did a lot of damage to America’s image. Let’s not even talk about him in the same way as the others.’”

On April 6, 2019, I wrote an open letter to the Prime Minister with three specific recommendations. The first recommendation was “Fixing Management Issues: Empowering the Office of the Chief of Staff.” Two days later, I got an email from his office, noting “We highly value your suggestions, and they will be used as an input in our future plans.”

Had the Prime Minister adopted the recommendation, the newspaper crisis could have been avoided. Let me first share the relevant part of the recommendation at length. I will then show how it could have helped avert the crisis.

THE RECOMMENDATION

The success of every President or Prime Minister hinges on the Office of the Chief of Staff (COS). In a recent book titled The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency, Chris Whipple wrote: “When government works, it is usually because the COS understands the fabric of power, threading the needle where policy and politics converge.”

The COS’s primary duties fall into two broad areas: Strategic overview and program execution, including crisis management. Strategic overview comprises bridging the leader’s vision and goals and weaving together his strategy and priorities into a coherent policy.

Program execution involves translating the leader’s agenda into a reality. The COS prioritizes and delegates essential items that must get done and makes sure that different government agencies are well coordinated and in keeping with the leader’s agenda. And all the while, he must keep his radar up to detect crisis signals and avert them before they happen or deal with them as soon as they materialize.

On a day-to-day basis, the COS juggles many independent moving parts and creates order out of utter chaos. In the words of Donald Rumsfeld (US President Ford’s COS) the job "was like climbing into the cockpit of a crippled plane in flight and trying to land it safely.”

The position not only demands vast experiences in administration and management, but also requires enlightened intelligence and strong personal character and integrity with courage to remind the President when his actions undermine his agenda.

In the US, the COS often come from the ranks of generals with a knack for enforcing discipline, corporate CEOs with vast management and administrative experiences, and seasoned politicians with skills to navigate the political nexus between congress, the opposition party, and the White House.

Ethiopia’s challenges are daunting, considering the festering ethnic conflicts, the absence of democratic culture, and the lack of institutional capacity to translate the change agenda into a reality. Your Chief of Staff needs to be a discipline enforcer, a management guru and politically savvy all wrapped into one.

As you reflect on the year past and look ahead, there is no office that should command your attention more than the Office of the COS. Is it fully empowered, adequately funded, capably led, and up to par with its duties and responsibilities? The success of your reform hinges on your answer to these questions.

HOW COULD THIS HAVE AVOIDED THE NEWSPAPER BLUNDER

If there was a functioning COS, the first thing he would do would be to gather relevant officials from the offices of Public Relations, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Finance, and the Ministry of Economic Commission and ask them to prepare briefing notes. The briefing notes determine the topic, scope and depth of the discussion or interview. Given the unfair international media coverage of Ethiopia, the briefing note will use the opportunity to reframe the narrative and put Ethiopia in a positive light.

Once the briefing notes are prepared, the next decision will be the setting where and how the interview and meetings will be conducted. This will be specific, including how long each session will last and what topic will be covered. The COS will attend the meetings to enforce time and compliance with the agreed scope of topic. These decisions are made with two things in mind: Form and Substance. The journalist needs to know he is not meeting with a pal but a Prime Minister of a nation with 120 million people. It is a common practice for handlers of a national leader to negotiate the scope, length and venue of the meeting or interview.

If the government does not control the topic, depth and scope and protocol of the discussion, the journalist will. If the topics of discussion are not well specified, narrated and gridlined, the PM will have to improvise talking about random topics such as what age is appropriate to ride a bike. That is tantamount to throwing the PM into a den of wolves. This is exactly what happened. It was not only a lost opportunity but also a blunder.

THE PRIME MINISTER MUST STOP THE TOUR HE PERSONALLY GIVES TO FOREIGN VISITORS

The Journalist described the tour the PM gave him as follows: “At the wheel of an armored Toyota Land Cruiser, trailed by a car full of bodyguards, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed drove me around Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. With a politician’s pride, he pointed out some of his recent civic projects: a vast park and a national library; a handicrafts market; a planetarium, still under construction. But, as Abiy and I toured Ethiopia, he seemed to want to talk about everything but the conflict that had engulfed his country. From inside his motorcade, it was as if there were no war going on at all.”

The article mentions two foreigners who have spent time with the PM: Professor Stefan Dercon of Oxford University and Jeff Feltman. Though it is not mentioned in the article, I am told that the PM has driven the Professor around to show him his favorite projects and city parks. The Professor’s take away was “Abiy likes to present himself as this charismatic leader who puts himself above it all. I think he just likes shiny projects.”

The Journalist also quotes Jeff Feltman as having said: “I had the same tour as you. Abiy was saying what a man of vision he was, that the U.S. simply did not understand him, that he was trying to move Ethiopia into the future, and that Tigray was just a distraction. The charm offensive didn’t work.”

Whatever the PM’s motive to spend his precious time chauffeuring around foreign visitors maybe, their takeaway is not what one would want. It is long past time to stop it.

My takeaway from the article is that the Prime Minister needs competent enablers around him. The people around him lack competence, experience, and exposure to global dealings. Many of them have no business being in the highest office of the land.

If I were to add one paragraph to my April 2019 open letter noted above, it would be advising the PM to read Kissinger’s book, "Leadership." The book provides brief stories of six consequential world leaders who inherited governments in crisis and transformed them, overcoming extraordinarily difficult situations.
https://zehabesha.com/the-new-yorker-piece-on-prime-minister-abiy-how-the-pms-handlers-turned-a-golden-opportunity-into-a-blunder/