Being halfway between an implementation of Business Process Reengineering (BPR) and yet another round of reshuffling due for sometime in September 2008 - the possibility of this is talked about in a hush in power corridors - many of the senior officials at the state-owned Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE) were too busy last week to be visible in their offices.

A second batch of trainees have entered into the newly [Chinese] built textile industry training facility on the road to Kotebe, to get orientation on the policy priorities of the EPRDF-led government. This orientation-cum-seminar is deigned to be part of the BPR; gossip claims the bank will, at the end, foot the bill that may reach millions of Birr, including covering the bill for catering that is provided by Imperial Hotel. It should be an enormous task, as well as a lucrative deal, to feed hundreds of people every day, nearly three fourth of them are fasting, gossip observed. Judging from the first round, the bill may as well reach close to two million Birr.

Ironically, many of the attendees are not pleased with the seminar, for they are uncomfortable with the whole idea of orientation. Some of them think it is rather an indoctrination process by the Revolutionary Democrats, with a clear political objective of perhaps using it as a platform to recruit as many party members as they could get from them, claims gossip. This was also a view widely shared by management members of the bank, who had debated on the merit of attending it before they decided to do so. Gossip noticed that there are those who suspect that they might, at the end, be requested to fill in membership forms, although there was no precedence in the past where similar seminars were given to employees of other state-owned companies.

What is true, though, is that participants of the seminar cannot afford to be reluctant, or lethargic, about the orientation, which gossip suspects has a lot to do with telling them the role of a developmental state than teaching them about finance. These are bankers, public sector employees and not disciples of revolutionary democracy, although there may be some in their midst, gossip said.

When it comes to an end, all participants will probably sit for a kind of examination; their respective results will affect their place within the bank, come a reshuffling, claims gossip. This seems why the orientation appears to be too important to be ignored, according to the consensus in gossip corridors.

Such an orientation, deemed essential by its authors, is mainly run by Abay Tsehaye, board chairman of the CBE, and a veteran Revolutionary Democrat. He took over from Melaku Fenta, chief of the newly restructured revenues and customs authority. Both are among senior government officials who conduct the training. Gossip learnt that participants found Abay “less dramatic” and “strictly formal.” That is more true compared to Tefera Walwa, minister of Capacity Building, also Czar of the BPR; CBE staff loved him for he was humours and hilarious, gossip disclosed. His longtime friend, Addisu Legesse, deputy prime minister and minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, was seen as a man who called spade a spade. He was so direct, he took the risk of being considered blunt: His statements on why the party is not willing to let the issue of land ownership go, linking it to the party’s hold onto political power, and the unlikely outcome of war with Eritrea in reclaiming the port of Assab were few of the shocking dose to the participants.

And Girma Birru, minister of Trade and Industry, a federal agency credited for its success in implementing BPR among the six ministries originally enlisted in the programme, was rated high and admired by participants for his not only intellectual calibre, gossip learnt. They found him engaging, and down to earth as he was well informed. Others, however, saw his as a simple maneuver in employing the appropriate terminologies and jargons the technocrats are fond of listening. In terms of substance, some are of the view that he was no different.