I was listening to Isaias Afwerki�s annual wisdom allocation and, between the occasional spacing out and a nap� what? come on! 2hours and 25 minutes, that is Castro land! I think that is too long for a movie with no plot�I asked myself what does this remind me of?  You get no bonus points if you answered, �Saleh, it reminds you of all the speeches and interviews he has given for 14 years now.  You could take his interviews/speeches from 2002, 2003, put a �2004� label on it and there would be no difference.�  That is true, but too obvious.  But what else does he remind me of?  And then it dawned me: a consultant!

Those of you who work in large corporations are familiar with consultants. For the rest, I recommend a classic movie�Office Space�that will give you an accurate description, and a new understanding of �ahem, yeah, why don�t you go ahead and�� And, the movie is one hour shorter than Isaias�s speech.

Don�t misunderstand: I have been a president of a mid-sized company and a consultant to others.  (I once consulted about efficiency for a company whose General Manager had been trying to curtail abuse of the photocopier. Then he photocopied his memo that they shouldn�t make unnecessary copies�50 times.)  I am also proud of a close family member who is a Six Sigma Consultant (the black belt of consultancy), so back off your hate e-mail.  Nothing against CEOs or Consultants: I am, in the parlance of the hip-hop kids, not hating the player, just describing how the game is played.  

Ok. The concept is this: you are working as hard as you ever did, but the boss who (in your opinion) doesn�t contribute a fraction of yours to the bottom line of the company, thinks you can do better.  Or maybe the whole company is doing well, but your division/department is not.  Maybe everything is going badly and the owners of the company have no clue what to do. Maybe everything is going phenomenally well, but the owners have no clue why that is and how to sustain it. 

That is when the consultants are brought in.

The consultants interview the CEO�to get a �buy in�, then they learn about the company�s products/services, then they go about their business of diagnosing the company�they interview, they assess, they measure, they compare.  Then they give you the bill and the pill.  The pill could be cutbacks, more training, a new way of training or, everybody�s favorite, restructuring.  Mostly, they teach you new words, packaging everything in a new wrapping paper. Behind every trendy business-speak is a consultant �for example, they are the ones who invented the overused �paradigm shift.�  (I could be wrong, but I wouldn�t be surprised if they were responsible for the equally putrid �win-win situation.�) In fact, if you follow consultants from one company to another, one year to the next, you will find that their cure and their rhetoric is remarkably similar. 

Not The Only One

Isaias is hardly the only Head of State who confuses his role and doubles as a consultant for the state he is supposed to preside over.   Just the most outlandish.  Ethiopia�s Meles Zenawi is a close second.  Meles can talk about a contract he has signed as if it is something he inherited from the previous administration; he can talk about the underperformance of his government, as if he is a member of the opposition party; he can even talk about the flag of his nation, as if he is an art student in France�. 

But let�s talk about our own Numero Uno.

In his role as Consultant, Isaias can achieve a level of detachment that rivals that of a surgeon dissecting a patient.  �I never, ever believed there ever was a private sector in this country,� he says in his interview with the Eritrean government media on New Year Day 2005.   It is as if he is a consultant for IMF or World Bank talking about some remote country he just visited.  It is never �Eritrea� or �our people� or �our administration�; it is �this country,� �the people�, and �the government.�   The government must do this, they should do that, and the people are doing this instead of that.

The communication style is like that of a Consultant giving a report to the people that hired him�cold, unemotional and impersonal.   The number of the Eritreans living on handouts is reported in the same tone, the same cadence, the same volume, the same animation as the one used to report the number of kilometers of roads paved.  Isaias�s information is not meant to educate or to inspire but to impress�unnecessarily faceted, the minutia arrayed with the colossal, in mind-numbing sleep-inducing detail.  The consultant-speak is translated verbatim from English to Tigrigna, all designed to impress.   Boy the man knows his stuff; check, please.

The Consultant always finds a department to single out for praise.  In Isaias� case, at least this year, it is the Department of Finance.  Why? They, apparently, have provided a very detailed report, which confirms his bias that there is no private sector to speak of in this country, that the government has been very generous, and that the people are too spoiled.

Consultants are big on �restructuring� on the theory that how things are organized create or destroy process bottlenecks.  Sometimes the restructuring is substantial (we are consolidating X with Y) sometimes it is cosmetic (�The Sr Vice President of Administration is now the Regional Director of Division Y and, in his new capacity, will report to the Executive Vice President of Administration.  This is a lateral movement.�)  Isaias the Consultant is BIG on restructuring, most of them arbitrary, cosmetic and subject to equally arbitrary reversal.  The intent is to create hyper-action without movement: confusion. 

Switching to the Role of Head of State

Now, just as easily, the head of state can switch to the role of the President.  Armed with all this information and analysis that his Consultant (himself) provided him, how is the President (himself) going to act on it?  Again, here, the emphasis is not on solving a problem, but to impress upon us that he has a thorough understanding of the problem from all its angles.   By definition, exchanges between journalists (who want to know everything) and their subjects (who want to disclose only the most favorable information) are inherently confrontational. But in a nation where the head of state has absolute power and Eritrean journalists are often reminded that they live in the biggest jailer of journalists, adjustments have to be made.   Survival mechanisms must be adopted: cloying, toadying, and asking the right questions (which, under no conditions, must include the whereabouts of fellow citizens who have disappeared.)  The survival mechanism our New Year 2005 journalist adopt here is a nervous laughter, which helps diffuse any wrath that might be unleashed.  (I am not 100% sure of that, we will be sure when someone defects and Gedab has him fessing up.)

Also, there must be no interruptions. 

These unstated rules, plus Isaias� propensity to want to impress but not inform give us what we got: in an interview that lasted nearly two-and-half hours, there were a dozen questions.  If we are generous and assume that each question lasted a minute, this would mean that each answer averaged 11 minutes.  Including a question about the internal political situation in Ethiopia, whose answer began with �I don�t have much information about this subject�.� Which didn�t prevent him from expounding on it at length, anyway.    

Isaias�s Worldview

By now, after countless interviews and addresses, we can piece together Isaias�s Worldview.  An Eritrean problem, according to Isaias, exists for three reasons.   One: It is the fault of the world; Two: it is the fault of the Eritrean people; or Three: it is the fault of the Eritrean government. Ok, so far, this sounds reasonable.  It is the sort of clear, black-or-white solutions consultants are fond of.  But here�s where the breakdown comes in: if it is the fault of the world (oil prices, border demarcation, peace in the Middle East, terrorism) it must be because the world has not risen up to its level of responsibility.  This is unforgivable.   And Isaias has no problem telling the world, to its face, how wrong and irresponsible it is. Just like a consultant.  If it is the fault of the Eritrean people (profiteers, naieve people, tax evaders, draft evaders), it must be because the punishment has not been severe enough.  This, too, is unforgivable.   But if it is the fault of the government (incompetence, inefficiency),  it must be because the government which he heads has had only limited experience governing (telmedien eyom!) or because the government has been too generous and too accommodating of the people.  Or, my favorite, it is because there has been insufficient supervision of the Ministers and Directors by the Office of the President. Thereby promoting the myth of mesarHti endiyu s�eenu, beynu eeu yserHala zelo eza hager   

The same detached, unsentimental Isaias can get quite emotional--contemptuous, sarcastic, angry, venomous�if he feels criticism is directed against himself or his decisions.   All the emotional tools at his arsenal are then employed, his favorite being inducing guilt on the poor people whose only sin is being alive.  Witness his impatience in the interview with people who have complaints about the quality of the service their government provides them.  His response: �we have spent half our life in the service of this nation,�  �we have a certain traditions��, �we have an obligation to our martyrs..�  The proper response to this is supposed to be to wither away and hide in shame.

Just Leave

Going back to our story of the consultants and CEOs, when the whole consultancy ordeal is over, both parties are happy to part ways.  Including the consultants.  But what do you do when the CEO is the consultant?

Every Isaias Afwerki interview/address is the same: reiteration, explanation, elucidation of Eritrea�s problems�the problem described in fancy, often impressive, and quotable language.  Isaias is long on describing problems, short on providing solutions.    In the face of a crisis, there is never a deliberated, studied solution to a problem.  Isaias�s leadership style seems to be don�t find solutions for problems; just wait, and they will come to you.   On all the big issues--Refugees in Sudan, land policy, constitutionalism, press law, demarcation, rule of law, food sufficiency�Isaias� solution is �Do Nothing.�   It is, what the consultants call, �paralysis by analysis.�  When you wait long enough, a solution will appear, thereby reinforcing the Prophet Isaias myth, without questioning if it is the right solution or the opportunity cost of the time wasted waiting for it.

This is not to say that he does not act�he does, often in aggressive and reckless measures, without any deliberation or consulting anyone�but only when he thinks his power to execute his �Do Nothing� policy is being challenged.  It is like a manager whose only skill is to put out fires; bored, he becomes an arsonists just so he can test his fire-fighting skills.  A Crisis Manager, the consultants call it.

In his New Year�s Interview, Isaias Afwerki has, once again, made a compelling case for term limits.     With all his problem-describing skills, it is a wonder how it has escaped the notice of the Consultant that one of Eritrea�s biggest problem, if not the biggest, is the President. The man has just got to go. If he doesn't believe me, he should hire real consultants who are not afraid of him--they will tell him the same thing.  Better yet, empower the people and the conclusion will be the same.

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