Ethiopia: Silent Ghosts, Loud Paranoia – What Haunts Somali Region Leadership?

Addis Abeba — The ruling Prosperity Party (PP) today stands not as a movement of accidental convergence but as a calculated alliance forged through political maturity, compromise, and vision. In this equilibrium, two political figures–Adem Farah, Head of the Coordination Center for the Development of Democracy with the rank of Deputy Prime Minister and Vice President of PP, and Ahmed Shide, the Minister of Finance–stand out not merely for their proximity to power but for the rare political calm they project in a country often rattled by winds of tension. Adem and Ahmed, both from the Somali region, embody political gravity. Measured in tone, unshaken in crisis, they seem to hold a quiet understanding: a party is not a platform to shout from but a vessel to row together.

Yet one among them, a former comrade, a kin, and once a fellow symbol of reformist hope, President Mustafe Muhumed Omar of Somali Regional State, appears entangled in a political paradox–a ghost-chasing spiral of self-manufactured crises. Where others see space for growth, he sees shadows of sabotage. Where the federal government has granted historical latitude to self-rule, Mustafe seems convinced the hand of interference lingers. But who is pulling the string? What ghost does he see that the others do not?

Controlled calm, manufactured chaos

If leadership were algebra, Aden Farah would be the constant–rarely loud, never impulsive, yet present in every national variable. In a political theater prone to overacting, his stillness is his strength. He speaks when necessary, acts when expected, and never confuses noise for momentum. He understands that real change often begins in silence, not slogans.

Ahmed Shide, by contrast, is the technocrat-statesman hybrid. A man with one eye on the spreadsheets and another on the political scoreboard. He doesn’t tweet policy. He crafts it. He doesn’t cry victimhood; he builds value. In a fiscal era where Ethiopia battles internal fragilities and external debt burdens, Ahmed has emerged not as a miracle worker but as a stabilizing force–a denominator that makes the political equation balance. Together, their calmness isn’t an absence of politics–it is mastery of it. A discipline alien to the increasingly turbulent maneuvers of Mustafe’s administration in Jigjiga.

Since ascending to the presidency of the Somali region, Mustafe has governed like a man whose shadow walks faster than him. His leadership has been persistently marked by allegations of repression, silencing of freedom of speech, and corruption. Whispers of plots, betrayal, and manipulation–all seemingly birthed not from outside sabotage, but from an inner theater of imagined enemies. Experts, analysts, and even old comrades have begun to quietly murmur, “Is this a crisis of governance or a crisis of mindset?”

Even within the PP’s Somali cohort, internal fragmentation is more illusion than institution. The recent regional crisis–a swirl of detentions, accusations, and reactionary policies–has almost nothing to do with the PP machinery. In fact, it bypassed the party completely, leaving many to ask, “Is the president still rowing with us, or is he building a boat of his own?”

Under Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, the Somali region was gifted what no other regime had: political autonomy with minimal federal interference. The ghosts of top-down imposition were laid to rest. The old military grip faded into history. Instead of utilizing this for institution-building, economic revival, or reconciliation, the region found itself hostage to internal drama, its leadership chasing fires of their own making.

The Prosperity Party, for all its structural imperfections, cannot carry leaders who plant fires only to later play firefighter.”

In mathematical metaphors, if Aden and Ahmed represent the integers of stability, Mustafe has become a variable that multiplies uncertainty by itself. The result? An exponential equation of distrust–toward federalism, toward the party, even toward his own base.

Federal silence, regional screams

Yet in the face of these repeated political convulsions in the Somali region, one cannot help but ask, why do figures like Aden and Ahmed, who possess the clout, competence, and closeness to the Prime Minister, remain stoically silent? Is it out of strategy, political etiquette, or a tacit calculus of consequence?

There is a growing perception that both men, despite their regional roots and senior federal ranks, have chosen institutional camouflage over corrective intervention. Some argue it is out of respect for the autonomy granted to regional presidents–an ethos championed by Prime Minister Abiy’s federalist reforms. Others suspect it is a calculated silence, a political bet that the instability will burn itself out without implicating the larger structure of the Prosperity Party. But silence too is a decision, and in this silence, chaos finds oxygen. The region bleeds credibility, and the party absorbs the heat–slowly, yet surely.

At the heart of the broader puzzle sits Prime Minister Abiy, a leader known for his panoramic grasp of Ethiopian politics. Yet here, in the Somali Region, he seems either gravely misinformed or tragically uninformed. For a man who has often intervened to deescalate far more complex crises in Tigray, Amhara, and Oromia, his detachment from the Somali region’s political mismanagement is either a calculated tolerance or a dangerous blind spot.

The debate remains open. Some insiders believe he receives filtered briefings, curated by those who wish to preserve the image of loyalty over the truth of performance. Others believe he deliberately grants the region leeway in the hope that self-governance matures through mistakes. But if the Somali Region’s house continues to burn while the Prime Minister believes it’s being painted, then the nation is not merely watching a political failure–it is enabling it. When reform turns into ruin, leadership must ask, “Who whispered, and who listened not at all?”