Freeman Aikael Mbowe, the chairman of Chadema, expressed controversial opinions about the presidency and his tribe’s persecution. While he has the right to share these views, political parties are expected to support the unity of the government. Given this, I’m questioning whether Chadema still meets the requirements to be a registered political party in Tanzania.
Under Tanzanian law, all aspiring political parties are bound by law to accept and promote the union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar. This is why they are required to solicit and secure endorsements from registered voters from all corners of the union government.
A minimum number of registered voters can endorse the registration of any political party, and there are also minimum thresholds of regions on either side of the union that can endorse political parties before they are registered.
The code of conduct, too, binds registered political parties to promote unity and respect for the citizenship rights of both sides of the Union government. Citizenship rights include gunning down the Union presidency without prejudice to which side of the Union the presidential aspirant hails from.
Our constitution has outlawed any form of discrimination based on religious, ethnic, racial or gender, among others. So, questioning the legitimacy of a president solely based upon which part of the union the beholder is coming from entirely violates what our mother-in-law stands for.
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The ramifications of questioning the legitimacy of the union presidency based upon her place of domicile was well illustrated by the founding father of Tanzania, Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere, who once cautioned us that once any form of discrimination corrupts our politics, we would open a jinn bottle that would ultimately destroy everything we stand for.
Today, Chadema is undermining Dr. Samia Suluhu Hassan’s presidency solely because she is a Zanzibari! Shockingly, Chadema has run out of ideas to the extent of belittling herself in this manner.
Chadema does not pockmark President Samia Suluhu Hassan’s policies but stokes regional identity politics to question her legitimacy while soothing their evil intent by juggling unfounded proportional representation inequities.
Mbowe deeply grieves about why a Zanzibari is a president but does not tell us it is our beloved union constitution that stipulates that any Tanzanian citizen fulfilling the constitutional requirements can ascend to the presidency.
The most essential qualification is citizenship, followed by age and education requirements and sponsorship by a registered political party. As the constitution stipulates, President Samia Suluhu Hassan ticks all these boxes.
Mr Mbowe may probably be making a case for constitutional amendments, but sadly, he did not say so. Curiously, Mbowe was a member of the constituency assembly that almost
wholesale approved the Warioba constitutional draft, and nowhere in that document did he express grievances about having a Zanzibari as our president. Henceforth, we must take his recent remarks as second thoughts laced with frustration over other policy issues he does not like. My problem with Mbowe and his ilk is that he is reticent on his grouses, making it mind-boggling for me to nail down his true motives.
But I know that regional identity politics’ consequences can be very grave. Once we entrench identity politics inspired by regionalism, we will also be courting ethnicity and religion divisions into the political equation. Then, no sooner than the divisive politicking rules the day, not only will the union government be under credible threat of dissolution, but the Tanganyika government will also be under credible threat.
Today, the Zanzibari are bad for us, but tomorrow, the Mbowe’s Chagga tribe will be disqualified from running for public office, and other significant tribes will follow suit. It will have a profound domino effect akin to a crumbling house of cards. Tanganyika is fraught with regional, ethnic and religious fissures that the presence of the union has papered over. Once the union disappears, our differences will be magnified beyond measure.
Is this the type of political activism we should be promoting? I see no light at the end of the tunnel when division seeds are sown as vehicles to achieve personal political ambitions. I say so because Chadema rarely talks about bread-and-butter issues but how to seize power by force.
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Recently, Mbowe tacitly disclosed that they were being urged to do something to usurp power to all places he had visited. In his own words, he said: “…..kila tunakoenda tunalaumiwa kwa kuwaachia hawa maCCM….” Carefully discerning such irresponsible broadsides hints at a coup d’etat through mass demos.
It is a path that never ceases power to the instigators but leaves behind a horrific trail of bloodshed and loss of human life. It is an option we should not entertain under any circumstances.
Chadema has been campaigning to restore the relics of Tanganyika without telling us who will be the ultimate beneficiaries. No average Tanzanian will profit from another layer of administration that will suck our blood like no other. There is a memorable lesson from Kenya over devolution.
The devolution campaigners never did the maths about the costs of running them, but today, all counties in Kenya are bankrupt. The bloated recurrent budgets that pay huge wage bills even before official graft is accounted for are at the top of the list.
A few days ago, to defer, county governments shut down most counties and rushed to Kenyan commercial banks to borrow over half a trillion Kenyan shillings to clear salary arrears, some of which are over six months old. County governments are meeting the wants of the leaders running them but have been doing too little to tackle the people’s problems in their dockets.
So, Chadema attacked the union structure and proposed weakening it with the Tanganyika government, refusing to answer what Nyerere had earmarked as unnecessary administrative costs.
Chadema, like Kenyan devolution activists, has not calculated the costs of creating a Tanganyika government. For sure, there will be more jobs for politicians and bureaucrats. Still, the country will suffer because more budgeted money will support recurrent budgets at the expense of development budgets.
Chadema is irked by the skewed representative democracy that has benefited about 80 Zanzibari to sit in the union parliament. They whine that one union, Zanzibar MP, represents
less than two thousand registered voters in their constituencies while Mainlanders represent half a million. Then, they close their case by making a finding that overrepresentation is an issue. Once you acknowledge you are in a marriage of convenience, you must also accept that it is a bargaining relationship. You gain here, and also you lose there. One must understand both sides and expectations in the union to make the relationship work.
Zanzibari fears total assimilation by Mainlanders; to tackle that, they were intentionally given more say in government matters. Mainlanders fear Zanzibar will be exploited as an avenue of international terrorism, amounting to regional destabilisation. These are genuine concerns.
Mainlanders exchanged say with regional security, while Zanzibar secured more say to quell apprehension of total absorption. National security tops the list when navigating union matters. Chadema fails to grasp why they think our constitution doles out two-thirds of parliamentary Zanzibar votes over union matters.
Once Chadema comprehends this reality, they will find that ratio representation is not even a critical issue when Zanzibari holds a 50% say over union matters. This translates into suffocating leverage to block any legal issue concerning union matters they despise.
My question to Chadema is why fume over skewed representation while Zanzibari has a 50% say over union matters? That decision-making authority dwarfs any advantage Zanzibari has secured from skewed representation.
The registrar of political parties ought to wave his gavel by putting Chadema on notice to strike it out from the register of political parties over sowing seeds of incitement, disunity, confusion, and chaos that foment ill will and violence. In South Africa, xenophobia hit top notches when President Cyril Ramaphosa blamed illegal immigrants for a surge in criminality.
Stabbing and looting of properties followed his reckless remarks. As Mbowe and acolytes in Chadema promote the politics of hate and exaltation of demagogues, the Registrar of political parties cannot abet lawlessness when his powers were recently strengthened to wipe out the advancement of personal political ambitions at the expense of national security.
The registrar of political parties should wake up from his slumber and put Chadema on notice. If they keep on promoting hate and division, then he should deregister them before Hell breaks loose before our own frightened eyes.
As for Mbowe, whom I never perceive as Presidential material, he will do well to redirect his energies into police interrogation, an area replete with misnomers that can salvage his political career. It is a goose chase, possibly worthy of pursuing.
