I am making a case to vote for our incumbent president, Samia Suluhu Hassan, in 2025, not because she is a woman, as most CCM politicians have been brazenly ranting about. This is a ringing endorsement rarely given to someone like me who seldom finds things work properly. I am a born perfectionist, so my views tend to be slightly harsh or less accommodating.
I am making a case for “Mitano tena” for Samia because she deserves it. Her gender has nothing to do with it but everything to do with her personal feats. In the last four years, I have seen a woman of vision, exemplary leadership, and inspiration to many. This endorsement also passionately assures the opposition that it is high time we close ranks on this one.
It happens once in a lifetime, and you can claim the presidency in 2030 if you still desire it. However, please let us clear the path for her unopposed candidature out of respect and acknowledgement of her outsized achievements. Today, we are going to travel together on a journey of her blitzkrieg success after success. Are you ready? Ready by ready? Brace yourself for an exciting safari of a lifetime.
The 2025 presidential election is like no other, for its hallmark is mightily significant as a nation. I shall expound on this. We must admit in public that since independence, we have never had such a caring president who is accessible and compassionate to the plight of the “walala hoi”. Unlike her predecessors, who boasted that they were carrying the banner of the poor and urging us to accept them as the rock and shield of the indigent, Mama Samia speaks with her deeds.
Where her predecessors had talked in length about what they would do to alleviate the plight of the poor, she is “walking the talk.” It is becoming almost impossible for our power-hungry opposition to make a case for what they could have done differently had they been on the steering wheel, from what she is doing right now.
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She is performing so well on the economics of “bread and butter” where it matters most that the opposition has confined herself to legal reforms as if on their own, our dining tables will be filled with “milk and honey”. We all know the answer to that one just too well: laws are not food but facilitative tools. Right now, what we need is poverty elimination, not distractions.
Her exquisite journey began about three and a half years ago when the fate of life changed her political fortunes forever, and she became the first female president in our patriarchal society that views males as providing national leadership. Just like President Barack Obama’s presidency that echoed reparations of some sort to racial injustices, Samia’s ascension to the topmost public office in this country was a game changer for all of us, notwithstanding our gender orientation, so to speak.
Her presidency, in many ways, was a conscience riveting to redemption, catharsis to our collective degradation of women and an acknowledgement that the era of the “men only” presidential club was truly over. Any father now will have a reason not to differentiate between sons and daughters because achievement is no longer associated with gender or a male privilege.
Mothers will now have a reason to pay more attention to what their daughters are doing because the ceiling has been melted. Mind you, we are deliberately shunning claiming the ceiling has been shattered into shards because the last woman who attempted to crack it in her story did not end well. That tireless woman was no other but our beloved mom, Hillary Clinton, of all people!
President Samia Suluhu has opened doors to opportunities for everybody, and over time, we shall see her incredible feats everywhere. Policy decisions take time to grow since they are seeds sown in fertile ground, and her story is no different. In tourism, her documentary ‘ROYAL TOUR’ Â introduced Tanzania to an audience that began thinking about asserting the role of an investor not confined only coming here as a tourist eager to feast their eyes on wild animals, spectacular landscaping or accosting the Zinjanthropus in his Eden garden somewhere in Oldupai Gorge.
Investors in nontraditional areas such as farming, civil aviation, and port management are knocking on the door. The beauty of tying agriculture to civil aviation and seafaring is opening overseas markets for agricultural products, and that means jobs, jobs, and even more jobs. Meat processing destined for the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Europe is gaining momentum. Depending on how it is managed, the planning seems flawless.
We say this because Brazil has turned the province of Quito into a money-making machine in less than five years. Meat processing generates more than USD 50 billion per year, and livestock keepers have their own airports and personal jets. Huge banners displaying luxury boats and personal jets sprawl everywhere in Quito Province. Those advertising the high-end contraptions know what they are doing: the demand is very much in the air.
Perhaps her biggest accolades should go to where she found the nation wobbling in 2021, in particular, human rights were concerned. The era of her predecessor, Dr John Pombe Magufuli, was pockmarked with wanton human rights abuses that even reputable international poll takers concluded Tanzanians were among the most unhappy people in the world.
We were unhappy because we never felt safe in our own motherland, of all the places! Abductions, disappearances and police gratuitous force left us feeling unsafe and were under an occupation of some sort. Whatever assault on human rights was happening elsewhere, we just felt it was a matter of time before that evil paid us a courtesy visit, just as the Kiswahili saying keeps hitting the right notes…”ukiona mwenzio ananyolewa wewe tia maji.”
Many Tanzanians who were on the opposite side of the political equation opted to declare themselves either political prisoners of conscience or self-imposed refugees. The good news we should all celebrate today is that they are all back, albeit ungrateful, as they abuse the latitude they enjoy now.
They are back home because they feel safe and sound under the caring hands of Mama Samia. Is that not a testimony that she has turned the ship around from hurtling into an iceberg and drowning to serenity to all? Nobody should take this achievement lightly or for granted. Personal security, the most important foundation for human development, needs no proof.
What is Wrong With our Misguided Opposition?
The real hard nut to crack in our disorganised opposition is history not siding with them. When Nyerere prophesied that would see at least four CCM presidents passing the presidential torch among themselves, few understood its spiritual meaning. Now we know for a fact there’s no credible path for the opposition to produce a president.
As we have already solemnly noted, history is the sole culprit. Most opposition leaders lacked the gift to excel in CCM, as one politician once revealed: “Wanaume wako CCM huko upinzani ni jalala la makapi yetu….” The Literal meaning is not gender insensitive, as many will adduce, but what he meant was that reliable leaders will never part ways with CCM unless they are not good enough to stay in the kitchen and endure the furnace.
The opposition has become the extension of the Kenyan opposition, photocopying everything their sisters in Kenya are doing without considering that the circumstances in their homestead are entirely different. Our fragile opposition assumes the role of Kenyan opposition pretenders and has wilfully become a one-issue brigade, and that issue is “tunataka katiba mpya.” If you press them in which shop that book is being sold, they will concede ignorance while urging us to brainstorm together and pen it down!
Our opposition Mandarins have miserably failed to grasp that their Kenyan political mentees had prepared their draft before clamouring for a new constitutional order. At the same time, they have nothing worthwhile to tout. It is such a lack of leadership skills that informs us that “Mitano tena kwa Mama Samia Suluhu Hassan” is the best thing that will happen for this country for a long time.
The opposition is now on the dock: Will they endorse her just as I have done, knowing they are most likely to advance their goals with her in the pole position rather than challenging her in a ballot box and distracting her from putting this great nation in a global map where we truly belong? The jury is still mopping out their true intents, whether they are in politics for national interests or serving their own bellies.
