The Government of “Sibsebas”and “Gemgemas”

The Government of “Sibsebas”and “Gemgemas”

By Y. Mesfin
July 17, 2003

---

Do you remember the old Derg days of Kebele Sibsebas? One of the
unanswered prayers of the Ethiopian people until now is their wish to
be
relived from those types of agonizing and endless meetings.

With a
change
of government in 1991, some may have hoped (rather naively) the new
administration will not be typical of its communist predecessor at
least in
its style. (forget its content). To the horror and disappointment of
the
Ethiopian people however, another Marxist Leninist regime with an
insatiable
appetite for endless meetings and Gimgemas came to power and have
brought
back those dreadful Sibsebas again.

Without any exaggeration one can say that the TPLF/EPRDF government
eats
Sibsebas, breathes Sibsebas and dreams Sibsebas. It has no life
without
“Sibsebas.” With no apparent result in the improvement of the standard
of
living of the people during the last 12 years, all federal and
provincial
officials west a lot of time and scarce resources indulging in
meaningless
communist type criticism and self-criticism. They measure success and
achievement not by the improvement of social services for the people
but by
the number of “Sibsebas” and “Gimgemas” they held over a certain period
of
time. You go everywhere at government offices in working hours
(specially in
the provinces as this writer once observed), the main decision makers
of the
government are in “Sibsebas”or “Gimgemas” and no body cares for the
people’s
daily business. This is a curse of a nation. The TPLF/EPRDF government
has
never read the feelings of the Ethiopian people on this issue (as it
didn’t
on other many national issues) and didn’t learn a single lesson from
the
mistakes of its twin communist brother- “Derg”.

We need not confuse here efficient and scientific performance
evaluation
techniques with these communist derogatory “Sibsebas”. These endless
meetings of government and party officials have nothing to do with
improving
the standard of living of the people, and are a far cry from what are
known
to be performance evaluation techniques that are practiced in most
civilized
nations.

The main propose of EPRDF’s “Sibsebas” is to ensure party loyalty
among
members, which quite often is producing the opposite result by creating
even
more fractures in the ruling party. There is also a hidden motive to
engage
the general public in constant bickering in useless “Sibsebas” so that
the
focus of attention is away from what the government is doing (at least
for
the time being). The government also uses these “Gemegemas” to attack
a
certain section of the society that it presumes is sympathizing with
the
opposition. The recent shuffling and purging of civil servants and the
apparent displacement of workers of the capital is a case in point. In
its
indiscriminate and vengeful act, the government has even fired medical
professionals from their jobs in the name of “Gemegema”. Other
countries try
to attract medical people while EPRDF leaders have the will to fire
them.
Can Ethiopia really afford to loose one medical professional while the
ratio
of doctors to patients ran approximately 1 doctor to 100,000 people?

The top EPRDF leaders are not bothered by the cost of these useless
Gimgemas
in terms of salaries and wages paid for the political cadres and lost
production for the public. The poor Ethiopian people will somehow foot
the
bill with higher taxes and denied social services. These useless
meetings
are also sometimes seen as a sanctuary to run away from national
problems.
About 99% of the time however, the leaders of the government don’t
touch the
main national issues in their discussions and come out from the
meetings
without solving those problems. For the most part they don’t
understand
that all social evils in the country, like unemployment, homelessness
and
crime are the result of their misguided economic policies that weaken
the
private sector, which was supposed to be the source of job creation and
wealth (the infamous land policy and random corruption charges are two
examples that are discouraging local and foreign investment).

The highest-ranking officials of the government have also tried to
implement
these types of communist “Gimgemas” in Universities with a very narrow
and
selfish interest of creating divisions and tension between students
and
instructors. While in almost all Universities of the world evaluations
of
instructors by students is done on paper, in a civilized manner and
secret
environment, the TPLF/EPRDF leaders want University students to
confront
their lecturers face to face and criticize them in open public
meetings.
While it is clear that this type of confrontational evaluation is
susceptible for bias and doesn’t produce the right results in improving
the
learning and teaching process, the Marxist leaders of the government
have no
qualms in imposing this criteria on the country’s Universities. In
other
words they don’t have a clue as to what academic freedom is all about.
Even
the Derg didn’t attempt to impose such type of primitive regulations
on the
academic community. (Imagine 1000 freshman students packed in a whole,
criticizing their Econ-101 instructor face-to-face, waiting for their
turn
to speak! Do you think one day and one night is enough for this
terrible
job to be completed? Add on top of this the other 1000 or 2000
students of
higher years, for each subject, and for each instructor and you may
have an
idea how gruesome and wasteful the task of this “Gimgemas will be in
Universities. Believe it or not, these are the kind of people who lead
Ethiopia now, and only God knows how some of them earned their MBAs
from
foreign countries with no apparent understanding of what Universities
are
all about! ).

One may wonder what brought about this primitive mode of thinking by
EPRDF
leaders, but the whole thing about these “Gimgemas” is the mixed result
of
Leninist mind and selfish interest to remain in power. This strategy
may
look attractive for a while and it may even give a false impression
that it
is working. It however will manifest itself in poor social services for
the
public, lost production for the country, poor quality of education,
narrow
tax base and a weak government in the long run. Everything has a price.

A mind probing question that perhaps needs to be asked here is thus:
will
this government bring about the much desired economic development for
the
people of the country (as some people would like to argue) given
sufficient
period of time? The answer is unambiguous NO. Even if you give it 100
more
years from now, this government can’t impact positive change in the
improvement of life for the Ethiopian people, given the attitude and
political disposition of the leaders. It has arrested itself in
outdated
ideology, and can never go forward. With the deliberate weakening of
the
private sector, the natural growth of population and the absence of
synchronized planning to accommodate its enormous demands, this
government
is set about to fall by itself.

The preoccupation of the leaders is how to stay in power at all costs.
It
doesn’t occur to them however, that any political party can also have a
chance to stay in government by doing good things that the people of
the
country would like to see happening. It doesn’t come to their mind that
improving the standard of living of the people is the only way to win
the
trust of the people. Coercion and aberration is their style of
governance.
Perhaps their predisposition that the people of the country have
already
identified them with “Eritrianism” may have made them to act
erratically and
find other desperate methods of staying in power. “Gimgema” is one of
the
wrong instruments they chose to accomplish this Machiavellian
objective, but
it may in fact be working against their own interest and bring the
opposite
result faster than they have anticipated.