I applaud the work by the Nasser foundation and the Alexandria Bibliotheca to create a virtual library housing Gamal Abdel-Nasser’s documents. It is a treasure and a wealth of information available there and I encourage every Egyptian to go there and read the documents to have a glimpse of an important period in Egyptian history. http://www.nasser.org/.
This one in particular attracted my attention:
It is the minutes of the council of ministers meetings chaired by President Abdel-Nasser on 11 Sept 1961 (just a coincidence to be 11 Sept).
Here are excerpts from the minutes and my comments.
The discussion starts with the president giving an update about his trip to Yugoslavia and the international situation. That part was very short, clear, and lucid. Then, the president switches to internal affairs and he starts by saying: “we have no agenda today.” I wonder how a 5-hour meeting of the council of ministers can effectively go without an agenda. Clearly, Bogdadi whispered in the president ears that all other ministers are not cooperative with him and that the numbers coming are confused. That instigation from Bogdadi makes the meeting to be tense and ineffective. We will see more of that later.
It is clear the president doubts what is going on underneath him. He feels genuinely confused by what is being told to him. However, he lacks the operational tools to set up the right mechanisms even though he is asking the right questions.
Mr. Sayed Marii is asserting that the baseline year cannot be doubted and is attacking those who doubt the baseline year.
Bogdadi who instigated the whole discussion, is the vice president and is a fellow free officer, doubts the baseline year but he says that in a cryptic way. He says a weird thing like: “we doubt the baseline year but the numbers of the baseline year are not controversial!” Completely meaningless utterance.
The president is back to asking questions and apparently reading from notes in front of him. He asks a question that how come wages in the ministry of health are decreasing. Bogdadi (who again instigated the whole thing to begin with by whispering in the president ears), is now trying to appear a team player and gives justification for how that could happen. Aside from the political aspect of the discussion of a minister backtracking to appear better, the president still cannot get an answer to his question even though the minister of health is sitting right there. It is obvious that nobody knows anything.
The president goes on now on a diatribe that clearly shows his irritation.
The diatribe continues and you can tell the president is really upset with the results and goes on to scold his ministers. However, he lacks the ability to provide solutions. His only solutions provided are: “this needs a solution. It needs martial courts, it needs a new revolution.” So, unfortunately the only tools that the president can provide are the extreme ones of martial courts. It is not clear to me how martial courts could resolve in a complex situation that involves managing a large Egyptian bureaucracy. The president, who provided a clear picture of what happens at the international arena, lacks management ability of the bureaucracy. He really needed an operational manager next to him who can handle it. Someone like a vice president. However, Mr. Bogdadi burnt his bridges with his fellow ministers as we saw earlier and nobody is volunteering to step in except based on political calculations. The hint of martial courts obviously makes the atmosphere even tenser and more political.
The president still goes on and sharpen his attack now on the minister of Education Mr. Hussein, who is also a fellow free officer. Now, Hussein responds back and stages a direct attack on Bogdadi saying that the planning concepts were not clear to any of the ministries. He ends his sentence by saying: “I am not accusing anybody,” which obviously contradicts with what he just said. Hussein who knows the president is liable to people whispering in his ears, understood what has happened between Bogdadi and the president and decides to respond. The exchange will become more heated later.
Hussein and Bogdadi have just clashed. The sad part is they brought a key issue. What is the goal of education in Egypt? Is it number of schools, number of teachers, or number of students. This is a strategic discussion that is well worthy of a council of minster meeting. However, it is lost in the political tension. Unfortunately, this led to disastrous consequences for Egypt. Till today, number of students and schools is the metric for education in Egypt. The president missed to latch on the strategic aspect of the discussion and drive it where it needs to be.
The president now steps in but in the wrong direction. He is gives a motherhood and apple pie direction that all ministers should work together, which as we know leads to nothing. Hussein is sticking to his guns that the numbers from Bogdadi are wrong. The fellow free officers are clearly fighting now in full view of the other ministers. The sad part is that the people who actually have knowledge did not open their mouth almost at all. So, someone like Mr. Al-Kaissony (finance) said only one sentence during the whole exchange about metrics even though he probably knows about metrics more than the free officers would ever know. The sad story of sidelining knowledgeable people to create positions for the free officers is manifesting itself again with sad consequences for the whole country.
Few ministers now dare to charge in after the successful counter-attack by Hussein. Unfortunately, they say nonsense. They try to be more royal than Hussein and support him further assuming now that Bogdadi is sufficiently weakened in the discussion.
Unfortunately, what those ministers just said like: “investment is the metric of progress,” is nonsense. It is sad to see someone reaching a ministerial level and saying something like that. Now the president starts to lose patience and goes on to explain that results measure progress not investment.
The above part of the discussion is now turning into philosophy. They are now defining what is investment and what is expense. This of course is something that finance graduates know very well and there is a unified code for those definitions. Bogdadi should have said that these are standard definitions. Instead, he says that everything spent is considered investment! Complete ignorance unfortunately. A finance freshman would have known better.
Mr. Marii (who is clearly a very politically savvy guy) goes on explaining complicated details. So he is clearly confusing the crowd sitting there who by now we know how shallow they are. He also is showing off his knowledge to the president. Unfortunately, what he brought up is a side issue. The real issue is how to measure and develop proper metrics for the Egyptian bureaucracy.
Now, we discover now that the whole Egyptian bureaucracy is dependent on one (yes only one) employee who came back from the United States (yes believe it or not despite the long disputes between Nasser and the US which will amplify soon thereafter) and has enough knowledge to set up metrics for complex organizations. So, the answer to that should have been to send more people (including those sitting in the council of ministers) to the US to learn and understand.
The president goes on another diatribe. He says that even a person who owns a ranch, knows the results. Of course he doesn’t know that none of the people sitting there behaves like he owns. He is failing to realize the difference between a capitalistic society and one that is not. This of course as we know led later to the collapse of the Soviet Union. I really think the note by Said Marii regarding the employee returning from the US should have sparked a discussion on the differences between the 2 systems and how to create an efficient system in Egypt. None of that happened. More interesting, the president says that every ministry should “establish a department for follow-up and measurements.” The president completely ignores Marii’s comment that Egypt lacked the skills. The president thought that creating façade organization is enough. This unfortunately led years later to what we see in Egypt right now.
That was one of very few sentences that Mr. Kaissony said and one of two that Abdel-Hakim Amer said! I tried to understand what Mr. Amer is trying to say. I could not. Translating what he said: “Adjusting the baseline year will show us the net increase in GDP but investments will show us if we are achieving our planned targets or not.” The 1st part of the sentence is obvious while the 2nd part is meaningless. This is his whole contribution to the council of ministers meeting!
Mr. Kaissony (who probably is the most knowledgeable in this whole crowd) only said that the increase in GDP is resulting from prior years investments. This is probably a very true statement as capital investments rarely yield results in the same year. Nobody paid attention to what he was trying to say and the only comment it attracted from Bogdadi was: “this all was calculate.” Another military approach to a very serious discussion that Kiassony tried to start which is: are we willing to only accept short term returns or do we want to look at long-term returns. Kaissony also is implying the older plans were more successful as GDP growth is now decelerating.
Now, here comes the solution. We need to create a monthly form for every establishment to measure the goals. The solution is the form! Not to agree on the proper metrics, not to define what those metrics are. The president clearly lacks the managerial skills and his vice president knows only how to manage using forms. Another ailment of the Egyptian bureaucracy that lingers till today.
1- President Nasser is charismatic but lacks the managerial experience to operate the large Egyptian bureaucracy. A 5-hour council of ministers meeting that ends at 11:10 pm lacks a specific agenda for example.
2- He is prone to advisors whispering in his ears causing tension in meetings and creating unnecessary palace intrigues.
3- Discussions do not go to the depth of the strategic issues facing the country resulting in the consequences we live through till today.
4- The council of ministers is hijacked by the political and personal disputes of the free officers even as late as 1961, which is 9 years after the 1952 revolution.
5- Everybody is afraid of President Nasser and he is not afraid to use threats leading to accentuated tension in the meeting.
6- Knowledge and capability of those attending is shallow. And those who know do not speak.
7- There is a general under-estimation of the importance of knowledge.
This was no attempt to attack President Nasser or blame him for Egyptian problems today. He is dead for 40 years. It was an attempt to understand the inner working of how Egypt was governed through a rare window of opportunity.
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