Suppose you happened to have listened to Godwin Mollel—the Deputy Minister for Health and an MP for the Siha constituency—on his campaign stump. You may have encountered his controversial remarks about development funds in that case.
According to Mheshimiwa development funds belong to the president and his able MP. He asked his audience to repeat after him: “ hela ya maendeleo ni ya Rais na mbunge wake.”
He went as far as criticizing all those who claim development funds belong to the people through their taxes. He said “wengine wanadai hela za maendeleo zinatokana na kodi, hakuna kitu kama hicho….”
Was Mheshimiwa right, and what are the implications if development funds do not belong to Tanzanians through their tax revenue? Does CCM own public funds through its leaders? This article investigates these questions and others.
Once we agree that development funds are not from our tax collection, everything we stand for as a nation will capsize. For starters, we will no longer need to pay taxes or show proof of doing so because, according to Mheshimiwa, CCM is loaded to the teeth.
CCM has the money through the president and his able-bodied MPs to carry out development activities! Tax payment compliance should cease because CCM does not need it!
What about the president urging us to pay taxes and collect receipts as proof of payment? Mheshimiwa did not address those contradictions, but it looks like the days of tax payments were over.
The Parliament passes development budgets, and its funding sources are well known, ranging from local taxes to loans and grants, among others.
Still, the Parliament that Mheshimiwa diligently serves in our budgets has never mentioned the president or MPs funding development budgets. Hence, either Mheshimiwa was taken out of context, or he was parading outrageous lies.
Apart from unwittingly dissuading us from paying taxes, Mheshimiwa inflicted more damage to our national identity. He eroded all forms of accountability. If the development budget hails from CCM, the public cannot hold their leaders accountable because the money is not theirs.
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Leaders can do whatever they want with the development budget because the citizens have nothing to do with it! Once accountability is in the shredder, misuse and embezzlement of public funds will not require public intervention through reporting and elections to remove those who are eating our money. It will be free fall.
Once we agree that development funds belong to CCM and not to us, even elections are inconsequential. Elections are a form of accountability that aims to ensure the well-utilisation of public funds.
However, if the general public is not the owner of public funds, then elections are useless. We cannot pin down our leaders if development funds are theirs, not ours. Development funds are wholly and truly public funds.
Another angle to consider is whether Mheshimiwa viewed persuading the parliament to allocate development funds to a certain constituency, say Siha, making that MP the owner of those funds.
An MP is a hired hand by the electorate and cannot purport to own the national funds approved by parliament. Mheshimiwa is acting in a representative capacity and cannot exalt himself beyond measure, converting himself from a servant into a lordship or a tenant into a landlord.
Mheshimiwa’s tone indicated he wanted to be credited for bringing development to the constituency he is serving, but his approach was deadbeat upon arrival. It was a feat that could have been claimed differently without tossing the reality out of the window.
He could have displayed a brag, like touting development initiatives under his watch, without disowning us from development funds. He could have applauded us for meeting our tax obligations and tied them to development.
That is how a representative encourages citizens to maintain tax payment compliance. Mheshimiwa is not an ordinary representative, it seems!
Instead, he chose to delink development funds with their true owners and speciously claimed that the president and himself were the true owners of the development funds.
Even before Mheshimiwa became an MP, some form of development funds trickled into the Siha constituency. So, the development carried out in Siha had nothing to do with him. The reality on the ground did not support all of Mheshimiwa’s claims.
Mheshimiwa seemed irked when development is tied to taxes but did not urge us to stop paying them! This is another area of contradiction.
If CCM is Mr. Moneybags, can Mheshimiwa command the Treasury to close shop because taxes collected are unnecessary? Since CCM has all the resources to run the country without our input.
Of interest is that the government has been heavily borrowing locally and abroad. Can borrowed money belong to the borrower in a representative capacity?
Can an employee of a bank claim he now owns a bank because the money is in his custodian? What is surprising is that Mheshimiwa did not seem perturbed by the controversies he was courting.
There are many good issues Mheshimiwa could have picked for his campaign speech. Worse, he was not running himself but promoting his CCM low-rank candidates.
His election will come next year, but he opted to self-promote himself instead of the local government election candidates.
As more and more CCM leaders veer away from the official positions and drawl in undemocratic and autocratic stances, the questions that rake the mind are: why are they behaving as if they are apprehensive of the future elections?
Do they sense something we haven’t? Do they smell defeat on the horizon? Why do they push a panic button months before the general elections? Is it due to the forthcoming CCM primaries, or is there a bigger Sangara to fry against the opposition?
Whatever it is, acknowledging that taxes are the backbone of development and should be owned by the citizens is the right approach, while severing taxes from development is akin to shooting one’s knee with a “gobble.”
Unless this new culture of worshipping leaders is nabbed in the bud, we will produce a cult of personalities. The culture is already in motion because we are urged to thank leaders for development.
While leaders who practice lip service claim to be servants in deed, they drool worship. We thank the president for development initiatives because if those concerted efforts had been directed to the Almighty God, this country would have been in better shape.
