Dr. Willibrod Slaa is the opposition supremo who made a political career out of displaying anti establishment defiance and through that he endeared himself in the hearts of many harbouring similar sentiments.
During his political peak in parliamentary revelations, we were feted to what went behind the scenes in high public office. In those days, it was imperative to note he was frying the government by its own oil: CAG reports.
In this particular case we are dealing here, it looks like Dr. Slaa has chewed more than he can swallow. He has no official source to back up his recent incendiary remarks that potentially borders on incitement, treasonous acts and undermining the security forces.
This article reviews what is at stake, and why Dr. Slaa may be facing some serious criminal indictments and the extenuating options available may have closed on the day he made those reckless comments.
The noose is slowly but surely tightening around him with no let-up, so to speak.
Before we address the gist of the matter, we need to review background information of the resume of Dr. Slaa.
Who is this person and why the police have arrested him for charges which have not been made public by the time I was sizing up this discourse.
However, he has now been officially produced in the Kisutu Magistrates Court where has been arraigned for sharing false information online through his X page.
The charges are much lighter than I had originally anticipated but that could change significantly, and may explain why he was denied bail.
Sharing false information online are bailable offences but the fact that bail was off the table looks like the charge sheet could expand to include more grievous charges like treason, incitement and undermining national security.
Dr. Slaa caught our imagination after he dumped CCM in 1995 general elections for Chadema.
It was an act of defiance rarely seen in those days of braving teething issues of the reintroduction of multiparty democracy.
Dr. Slaa left CCM in a huff after his name was removed from vying for the Karatu Town constituency parliamentary seat despite having locking first position in the CCM parliamentary nominations before his closest challenger, a CCM inveterate insider, one Patrick Qoro (now deceased).
Reflecting back, Dr. Slaa did not defect from CCM out of ideological discontentment but for personal reasons after seeing his political career was blunted by CCM central committee.
Voters too had urged him to decamp, and they opted to elect him partially because of the unpopularity of his closest political rival, Patrick Qorro, but also due to his own development achievements through his NGO where he had solved a chronic water shortage nightmare.
Qorro never impressed voters; he had an answer to the water scarcity that was hampering economic progress in Karatu township.
After joining Chadema, he sailed through in Parliament and went on to be Chadema Secretary General. During parliamentary proceedings, Dr. Slaa made his presence felt with mega corruption pronouncements that wrongfooted the government in those days.
It was an unprecedented show of political agility and fearlessness but his main source of those revelations was the CAG annual reports.
While CAG annual reports were reduced into rituals, Dr. Slaa gave them meaning and made follow up of CAG recommendations paramount.
Since then, AG reports became part of the public accountability culture albeit still tainted with double standards.
This time around, however, is very different. First and foremost, Dr. Slaa is no longer an MP and second he is not protected by immunity and privileges of acts of commission or omission of MPs during parliamentary proceedings.
Our first experience with this happened in the Augustine Mrema parliamentary days where he went to court seeking access to his fundamental parliamentary privileges and immunity based upon what he had uttered during his services there.
I still vividly remember how the House Speaker, Pius Msekwa, wrote a riposte in the government gazette that disputed Mrema’s interpretation of Parliamentary Standing Orders on privileges and immunity of MPs during parliamentary discourses.
Mrema walked unscathed but Dr. Slaa is devoid of this defense.
Dr. Slaa claimed that he was informed by a senior member of the security forces, TISS, that all was not well in the government over what was happening in the main opposition party, Chadema.
There were unsubstantiated allegations of government top officials interference on Chadema internal elections with bribes passing hands to ensure government sympathisers carried a day.
Dr. Slaa did not disclose his source beyond alluding TISS employee had informed him of that!
Claims and counterclaims of government bribing one side of the Chadema wing against the other faction in this election are not new.
The current chairperson Freeman Aikael Mbowe has been taken to task over those allegations, and has been parrying them away as “mambo ya kihuni hayo”.
He has never addressed in specific terms the real issue of whether or not some serious cash was corrupting Chadema elections.
During the lower cadre elections, Tundu Lissu has been naming names of CCM stalwarts behind the flood of cash in Chadema elections to benefit Mbowe and his closest allies.
Mbowe has never denied or conceded whether it was true money has changed hands or has been in circulation in the Chadema elections beyond trolling “lack of evidence” to substantiate the allegations.
He has never cleared Chadema’s elections of wrongdoing with substantial evidence from participants themselves.
What is of concern for Dr. Slaa is to reveal his TISS source which if it is true may carry personal cost to that snitch.
Revealing government secrets is a felony that may attract a lengthy jail term and a loss of employment.
It is not an attractive place to be particular to Dr. Slaa: compromising his own source, if any.
Dr. Slaa is in a dilemma because he cannot seek a defence of clients’ professional privilege.
That presumably TISS source from Dr. Slaa’s own words wanted to be outed, and that he has reached a “point of no return” after being troubled by what he had witnessed!
Surely, it is Dr. Slaa who by his own claims is required to discharge the burden of proof.
In this case is outing his informant to prove beyond reasonable doubt it was within his right as a good citizen to divulge the state of security forces that has affected their morale and loyalty to their superiors, and the nation at large.
Failure to do just that will be interpreted that whatever he had divulged in the X was personal wishes not buckled up by any government informant, and had made up those outrageous claims to win the hearts and minds of his listeners.
The finding will be that he had lied in order to discredit security forces, and by doing so had incited members of the security forces with treasonous intent in mind.
The more I cogitate on Dr. Slaa predicament the more I foreshadow some serious legal trouble brewing against him.
Can Dr. Slaa concede he “misspoke” and seek “plea bargain” reliefs? It is unclear how our legal practice in non monetary compensation works so we need to wait and see what kind of defense Dr. Slaa will advance before we assess what chances he has to beat the criminal handcuffs on his wrists.
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