If you ever doubted CCM is done as a political force in Tanzania look at how the Tanzania police is hellbent to disrupt Chadema campaigns. Chadema, now the most popular political party in Tanzania, is waving a political persecution from all angles. Chadema vice chairperson John Heche was temporarily arrested by Tanzania police in Dar-es-Salaam, Kariokor market, before a full packed audience that was well in tune with his anti-establishment remarks.
The police on orders from the civilian politicians who are behaving more and more like political orphans led to Mr. Heche, a two term MP, being pulled off his stump and his mic taken away before he was dragged to the police pickup despite the heckling if the very assertive audience demanding the police to leave them alone. This article digs deep on why this election is the worst in Tanzania history, but also highlights on reasons dilating CCM lost popularity.
The Dar R.C justified the unjustifiable!
The Dar-es-Salaam Regional Commissioner, Albert chalamila, sensing the illegality of the police actions against Chadema was quick to defend the police. The gist of his defence was the police was acting on wider public interest!
He said there are certain areas which are extremely sensitive that ought to be protected lest provoke violence or similar mayhem. He went on to list churches, marketplaces like Kariakoor and other public places.
The headwinds for the Regional Commissioner were he was licking his own vomit. In the last four years under President Samia Suluhu Hassan, Chalamila had held at least four political meetings in the churches and at Kariakoor. Of recent, he presided over a night vigil that had Premier Majaliwa Majaliwa as the chief guest. I excoriated them in another article for enmeshing worshipping places with politics.
Some of his meetings at Kariakoo involved responding to taxation disputes with business people there. Therefore, Mr. Chalamila was not truthful in his defensive remarks.
Besides, Mr. Chalamila didn’t address Chadema’s core issues. Chadema said they had police permit to conduct campaigns on the dates they were disrupted by the police. Since Mr. Chalamila had intentionally avoided key issues of Chadema complaint his excuses were out of touch with the reality. CCM has reasons to fear Chadema’s growing popularity.
Why CCM now is apprehensive with Chadema?
After bagging the 2025 elections even before one vote has been cast, an ingratitude of the unconstitutional election laws and rules reforms one would have expected CCM to chill out waiting with “bated breath” for her inevitable coronation. Not so, because CCM electoral triumph will be without voter participation that has opened a Pandora box.
The electorate is increasingly becoming hostile and threatening. CCM on her part is urging peace and tranquility. In other parlance, CCM is cajoling the voters to accept the likely eventuality of her illegal coronation, and move on. The electorate knows their disenfranchisement fuels their economic alienation so will not spirit away without a fight. CCM is seeking help from the amenable clergy to push an agenda of “peace without electoral justice”!
What CCM is asking the clergy is to revoke the doctrine and rewrite it in manner that will intersect with CCM parochial interests: bag the election now, and deal “perpendicularly” with the fallout next year.
CCM political problems demand its ouster.
CCM would love prolonging her unwelcome stay on the throne of power but is clueless on how it can pull out 80% of the poor Tanzanians from the shackles of poverty. CCM’s old toolkit of investing in education, and behaving like a “Praying mantis” didn’t work. Millions of highly educated Tanzanians are strolling our streets devoid of an idea how they can make themselves useful. Consumption of higher education has left them not only unemployed but also very frustrated.
What frustrate them most is to see the system in place rewards nobody in meritocracy for whatever few opportunities available. The rules favour those who have political connections and punish those who have none. The skills they have gained are not aligned with labour markets narrating why CCM is urging our own graduates to go back to school and acquire vocational skills!
CCM has been obsessed with big infrastructural projects that can cede a big cut for themselves. NIDA’s national identity cards is a case at hand. The project razed hundreds of billions of shillings and still majority of Tanzanians are yet to get their identity cards. Instead of resolving communication gaps, NIDA is already dreaming up another money guzzler project that will gobble a couple of hundreds of billions more to crank up identity cards for toddlers, of all people.
Nimble politicians and their supporting bureaucratic cast sniff easy looting there, and they will stop at nothing to achieve their unholy goals. For those who are yet to pick their identity cards, NIDA has promised to disown them paving the way for the same in the future. NIDA after cancellation of the uncollected NIDA national identity cards can still come nack with project number three, and claim it is in the public interest to repeat the exercise. More hundreds of billions will go to the rathole.
NIDA will not double down on contacting those who are yet to pick up their national identity cards but is swift to cover toddlers without addressing the current problems. NIDA doesn’t consider similar problems will crop up after the registration of toddlers. Many have been asking why NIDA is not deploying the technology adopted by INEC where identity cards are issued in minutes after the exercise has been wrapped up. Why take months after registration before the identity cards were distributed?
We have a Tamisemi minister, Mohammed Mchengerwa, who defends his ministry after the Arusha MP, Mrisho Gambo, raised corruption allegations in Parliament. Instead of assigning the CAG office to investigate the complaint, the Tamisemi minister opted to be a judge of his own cause. Now, he has come up with a major cover-up: His ministry is innocent, but the Arusha Urban MP is guilty as charged! What a sick joke!
The minister accused the hunter of official graft of the same. The good minister now claims the Arusha Urban MP had collected sitting allowance without attending a meeting. So, it was “tit for tat” aiming to threaten a reprisal if the Arusha MP sister didn’t back off. The Arusha Urban Mp together with Hon. Mpina, a Kisesa MP, are now not only endangered species within CCM but are also facing the axe in the forthcoming general elections. CCM of today peels herself of official graft whistleblowers and passionately hugs those who siphon off our national coffers!
Since the political landscape is swerving towards Chadema it explains why extrajudicial measures to suppress the biggest opposition party have become a norm rather than an exception.
CCM’s no love lost with the voters.
In 2010 elections, the former First Lady Salma Kikwete had asked a very important question which few have attempted to answer it. Her question was why younger people hate CCM. She was on campaigning trail helping reelecting her husband Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete last presidential term, and standing on his way was no other but Dr. Wilbard Slaa. What she had failed to understand was that CCM ceased being a mass party in 1985. It gradually transformed into a vanguard political party.
Post Nyerere administrations have reshaped CCM in a manner it is now a neo-colonial tool to empower aliens at the expense of the citizens. This is “about turn” for a political party that during independence identified foreign control of our local resources was “ignominy” but now has embraced foreign investment as core strategy of her economic paradigm! We have a president who unashamedly position herself as the chief promoter of “mpishe mwekezaji na fidia itakufuata huko utakokwenda….”!
CCM has neither invested in her own. During the Kikwete second term over a trillion of the so -called “stimulus package” was handed over to well connected business entities but not even a single cent was given to small businesses that has the potential to employ over 70% of job seekers.
CCM relationship with small businesses where majority of the voters are remains a parasitic one targeting squeezing taxes rather than reinvesting them to spur economic growth. Without investing into small scale businesses CCM has no chance of pulling millions out of poverty, and the big infrastructure projects are not part of solution but attribute to the problem.
Most big infrastructural solutions have burnt a lot of cash but have nothing to show off. Everyday stories of bridges and roads built three to four times being washed away are no longer news. Money is squandered and our debt trap grows exponentially without aiding in improving our collective lot. Substandard schools are everywhere but are not linked to labor markets and future employment.
Why harassing Chadema is misdiagnosis of a problem.
CCM leadership lacks ideas this is why demonising Chadema has assumed a new sense of urgency. Chadema is only responding to CCM massive failures and is not a cause of CCM unpopularity, but is a symptom of what has gone wrong. CCM political problems are self made, and Chadema has nothing to do with it. Post Nyerere CCM has churned poor leaders amd now is reaping what it had sown for the last four decades or so. You cannot plant “mathenge” weeds and expect to reap milk and honey.
Economic indicators to watch after CCM coronation in November.
After the rituals of the general election come to an expected end there are at least four economic indicators to watch and gauge whether CCM is heading to a tumultuous end.
One, pay attention to debt trap figures and ignore political reassuring platitudes. With a debt of over Tshs 100 trillion and a stubborn global inflation, anticipate interest payments to reduce the ability of CCM to service her debts and fund her lofty budgetary aspirations. Global interest rates could hit two digits and our debt burden could hollow at least a half of the recurrent budget. The ability of the CCM administration to cough up civil servant salaries without unleashing massive inflation will be fully tested.
Second, the level of employment opportunities generated by direct government interventions through start ups. How many small startups will get government subsidies to help them pulling themselves and others out of the vicious cycles of penury.
Third, observe whether three government parasites in the name of NHIF, HESLB and TASAF will keep their lucrative straws. These three organisations have enriched the bureaucrats working there but cannot solve the problems earmarked. These three institutions are now a national burden and ought to face the chainsaw if we are ever to release funds to support local entrepreneurship. Our policymakers are notorious for lack of creativity and have adopted wholesale Bretton Woods institutions game plan of fleecing developing countries’ natural resources under the guises of irresponsible borrowing. These retrogressive policies will have a major say in how much money is available to cater for the domestic agenda as we move forward.
Fourth, this has everything to do with the CCM archaic mentality: Investing in things rather than people. This is strange but sadly very true because in our school days we were taught to revere people centered development and abhor non-human development. I still believe in it but our policymakers who earned their degree certificates through cramming have surrendered to Bretton Woods institutional thinking that aims to control our major means of economy through debt ridden infrastructure funding. Will CCM dump things for her own people? Ironically, nepotism in the government has a lion’s share to define the imperialistic capitulation the country has taken with a pomp!
Concluding remarks.
The threat to CCM hold on to power has nothing to do with Chadema, and no amount of undermining Chadema will solve CCM incompetence. CCM has embraced mediocrity this is why is in deep political turbulence. The police didn’t take Heche to the police station but took him to a Dar tour until when evening dawned then they dropped him anywhere but his hone or office. The aims of the police was clear: Disrupting Chadema’s meeting in a forlorn hope of disconnecting her from her faithful followers who have long given up with CCM.
Read more analysis by Rutashubanyuma Nestory
