CCM’s strategy to exculpate herself over political disappearances and killings now tormenting a nation is to point an accusing finger. It accuses the main opposition party, Chadema, of all the evil that has beset the nation recently. Its big guns are ricocheting one message: It is Chadema’s fault that mayhem is troubling us. CCM does not see the police as at fault but exonerates it for wrongdoing!
In many ways, CCM might know the findings of an ongoing police investigation even before the report has been compiled and dusted off. Chadema, on the other hand, needs no further proof; the police are under the instructions of the CCM apex to finish them off. Which side is honest?
After the kidnapping, torture and murder of the Chadema leader were known, President Dr Samia Suluhu Hassan ordered an investigation while consoling the bereaved.
The X-world was unamused and came out firing all eight cylinders. Some questioned whether the police were capable of self-examination. To them, the police did it!
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Others called for Interpol to step in because there would be no independent inquiry when the accused was also the investigator. In the meantime, a CCM secretary general doled out the police an A plus of a clean certificate while decrying human rights violations.
The secretary-general took us into crime stats that indicated crime rates were steadily declining. In his message, he made it abundantly clear CCM’s long-term interests are ruined by abductions and killings in any form.
In many ways, the secretary general had no doubt who was behind the human rights abuses was not from CCM but harboured a long-term agenda to unleash political violence and blame CCM for being a political party in power.
The prime minister, too, strongly questioned why political violence explodes during electioneering season. He urged us to ask ourselves those questions. He pondered who the beneficiaries of political violence are.
His audience listened tentatively without interjections. It was not easy to discern how they had received his calls for pensive mulling over the uninterrupted abductions and violence in general.
One Musiba, once known to wage a relentless war against CCM insiders whom he suspected were throwing a spanner in the former president Magufuli’s government, has now turned the screws against the foreign powers.
He accuses them of meddling in local affairs and threatens to organize protests against foreign interference in local matters.
He warned them he was watching them. Curiously, Musiba had no noticeable backers flanking him, indicating that his latest incursion, like those in the past, could be a lone ranger or backed financially by the same people who were suspected of bankrolling his previous tiffs.
Later, after the secretary general did his bidding, the IGP spoke softly to ensure the nation was in steady, safe hands. This aroused anger from Chadema’s top bosses, who opined that the IGP was subordinating the president’s orders that acknowledged all was not well.
CCM read a different picture: Chadema attempted to prise a wedge between CCM and the police. This is a scary proposition because today, CCM increasingly depend on the security forces to stay in power. Once divided they will fall together like a tumbling house of cards.
Quickly, President Dr. Samia closed that gaping abyss between CCM and the police. She laid down new felonies on the hapless Chadema, who, in their meeting at Ngulelo in the Arusha municipality, had decided to destabilize the nation in several ways.
Deploy the youth to create evil circumstances that will blot a good image of the police. Through lawless acts, those youth will foment civil unrest that will force her to call it quits.
She reaffirmed before top security officers that as the commander in chief of the armed forces, she swore to protect the people, properties, and security of our borders, and she intended to do just that to the vigorously applauding attendees.
The two warring sides do not agree on many issues. Each side points an accusing finger at the other, with foreign mercenaries now the icing on the cake. But who is on the right path of the gospel truth?
Sadly, both sides are espousing a mixture of half-truths and half-lies. My task today is to figure out which is which.
I have no iota of doubt that the president was speaking the truth on Chadema’s long-term plans to destabilize the nation by exploiting the youth frustration of being saddled in humiliating poverty and unemployment.
The stripling cannot visualize a better life like their fathers, and that make them angry and vulnerable to insidious manipulation.
I also fully agree that Chadema appreciates the way the election laws have been crafted; they cannot win power, fair and square.
This is why their recent sleight-of-hand rhetorical agitation has been terror-oriented and ignominious to the rule of law. Chadema will prefer state dysfunction and chaos because they may attract international attention and interference, just like Kenya during the post-election violence of 2007.
The problem for Chadema is that Tanzania is not Kenya. Of all the noises about Nyerere being able to melt tribalism, few have acknowledged that ethnic tribalism has been replaced wholly by political party-type tribalism.
This lengthy subject needs an article of its own for a comprehensive interrogation. I promise one day to broach the topic of new tribes in Tanzania that are more dangerous than ethnic ones.
Keep the bubbling faith and wait patiently for it. But that’s as far as I can support the president.
CCM has a difficult sale to make. Although I agree that Chadema at Ngululelo plotted evil against the government, I do not agree that Chadema self-inflicted the gashing wounds and deaths among her cadres to make a point.
All the Chadema victims of gratuitous violence were loved by Chadema top brass, presenting no threat to them. I cannot see how Chadema would turn against their people.
That line of thinking is spurious and fails to suffice the yardstick of logic and commonsense. Chadema’s strategy is known. The party wants to create fertile ground for civic unrest and for this nation to succumb to the state of a failed nation.
To achieve that, Chadema has only one tool: demonstrations. Authorities know protests are the only credible weapon to elbow her out of power since they can inflame the youth and may act in a way that will havoc a nation.
It is a proposition no leader will permit, particularly in a banana republic where the majority depends on government largesse to make ends meet. Not forgetting foreign interests that may flip the scales depending on whom they feel have a greater chance of grabbing power.
Chadema quest through protests had to be nipped in the bud before hell broke loose. I can easily see why Chadema’s top brass are now on the receiving end.
Even the way their latest leader was murdered and thrown on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam City was to send an ominous message: surrender or else.
Even the psychological warfare we now see is meant to defeat them morally, mentally and psychologically. The problem for Chadema brass has been, for years, tightly embracing undemocratic practices.
Nobody knows whom they are representing save for their pot-bellies. I keep wondering why they are so obese. They will counter that even CCM grapples with obesity, so it is not an issue.
Chadema needs no reminder that this country is moved by the power of reasoning, not political violence. We also understand that what looks right today may be risible tomorrow.
And if you want to move faster, walk alone; if you want to walk far, walk with all of us.
At the moment, I am struggling to see where all this commotion will lead to. Both sides in the political aisle should know political violence benefits nobody and that evil cannot be overcome by evil.
Chadema may be wrong, but the government countermeasures are also very wrong and unacceptable.
