SWOT Analysis of Presidential Candidate Dr. Ghani
As Co-Founder of Institute for State Effectiveness (ISE), Dr. Ghani speaks at World Economic Forum.
Prior to April 5th 2014, so difficult was to identify the factors that distinguish Dr. Ghani’s platform from that of Dr. Abdullah. The talks of economic growth, employment, and education were sporadic; the key words, which are usually pinpointed during election campaigns elsewhere (e.g., GDP growth, public health care, interest rate, inflation rate, unemployment rate) were almost never uttered in main speeches. In this sense, the second round is not better than before. But, a concrete difference between Dr. Abdullah and Dr. Ghani is emerging while the two still continue to mask their actual intentions with a populistic flavour. This difference is rooted in the opportunities and threats that Afghanistan will face if either candidate ascends to the thrown.
Therefore, a brief SWOT analysis (i.e., the analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) of the candidates allows us to expose their actual intentions. To be concise, I blend each candidate’s strengths with the opportunities he will bring about and weaknesses with the threats he will most likely cause.
Opportunities:
Dr. Ghani’s election campaign revolves around a self-described program-based approach. The central strength for Dr. Ghani is claimed to be the possession of a systemic and comprehensive program, which will (according to Dr. Ghani) offer Afghanistan valuable opportunities in the next five years. Dr. Ghani used to be a social scientist by profession, so it’s not that difficult to understand the way social scientists like Dr. Ghani approach the problems. Not surprisingly, he transforms Afghanistan into an analytical model to be optimised for socio-political equilibria, given the changes in the behaviour of variables (i.e., politicians) at any point in time within the model.
Therefore, it’s more probable that, if elected, Dr. Ghani be able to make optimal “strategic” decisions for planning budgets, directing economic reforms, and restructuring governance backbone to deter corruption. On purpose, I emphasise strategic-ness to indicate the long-term nature of the decisions Dr. Ghani is good at making. The National Solidarity Program (NSP) is described as a development success story, which could potentially be replicated on a cross-sector scale in Afghanistan.
Threats:
Like most academics, Dr. Ghani is a reductionist. Putting aside practical realities, he views Afghanistan from the lens of a set of variables and the hypothetical model he keeps referring to. The variables consist of politicians (measured in terms of their ethnic weights) who are assumed to behave within the legal constraints of the post-2001 political system. Based on these rather unrealistic and big assumptions, he makes strange partnerships (e.g., with Dustom, Zia Massoud, Khalil, etc), pledges populist reforms of all sorts, and excessively trusts the smooth implementation of his plans.
However, as the economists confess, models - no matter how complex and game-theoric they become - will never live up to simple realities. Most political assessments of Afghanistan assign the highest scale to ethnicity (rather than to political coalitions, which Dr. Abdullah has successfully created) in shaping politics. Dr. Ghani has therefore engineered his team by focusing on and restructuring ethnic roles of Pashtun, Tajik, Hazara, and Uzbek figures within the future political system to a destabilising level. It should not be surprising if Dr. Ghani’s experimentation results in theory do not correspond to the actual on-the-ground consequences in the aftermath of the election - if he gets elected.
Dr. Ghani is not a skilled negotiator or political power broker to make rooms for putting his plans into actions. In fact, Dr. Ghani lacks the hands-on comprehension of Afghan politics as (for example) he’s completely outplayed by Dr. Abdullah in forging strong alliances efficiently and quickly. His knowledge of politicians’ behaviour is theoretical (not practical) and, in some instances, divorced from Afghanistan’s unpredictable realities. The academic experience fails to compensate for the absence of a long realpolitik career, which he lacks for the most part of his adult life (which is also spent outside Afghanistan).
Ex-Ante Net Results:
In an interview with 1TV, Dr. Ghani suggested his plans for a top-down purge of influential actors from the political decision-making scene if elected. Not only will not he tolerate semi-autonomy of local politicians (e.g., Mr. Ata, Mr. Shirzai, and Mr. Ismael Khan), Dr. Ghani wishes to sideline mainstream political trends, which emerged in the post-1979 era. Instead, he envisions to infuse and replace less powerful but rent-seeking backers (like Mr. Dostum, Mr. Zia Massoud, Mr. Danesh and some remains of Islamic Party) in the long-run by providing them with the upper-hand in accessing the government resources.
But, as the first round of the election illustrates, Dr. Ghani does not have a popular appeal and vote base among the citizens of most regions in Afghanistan (except for the tribal patronage among his own circles) to carry out political changes on such a large national scale. As recent alliances show, he also suffers from the lack of strong and decisive support from the mainstream political movements such as the Mujahedin, the business groups and corporate giants, the bankers, the traditional Kandahari-Panjshiri bases of power, and the like.
If implemented, this ambitious plan will re-shape the political scene in that it tightens centralised authority, introduces new dependent and rent-seeking political actors, and marginalises the current strong rivals. In a sense, Dr. Ghani hopes to bring back the politics of Afghanistan to the pre-1979 system. It remains to be seen in the future how skilful he will become in winning the trust of the largely suspicious public after his election. For the moment, however, Dr. Ghani will have to bear with lots of sleepless and tense nights in the next couple of weeks to catch up with Dr. Abdullah.