Constitutional Review Commission chairman Joseph Warioba hands over
copies of the second Draft Constitution to President Jakaya Kikwete in
Dar es Salaam on December 30 last year. PHOTO | FILE
By Mwassa Jingi
In Summary
Dar es Salaam. No doubt issues
about the Union structure have overshadowed the whole agenda on
constitution making. Before and after the commencement of the
Constituent Assembly (CA), various analysts have been talking and
writing a lot on the Union structure and forget other fundamental
elements contained in the same Draft Constitution. In a way, this debate
seemed so important because the Union structure is the bedrock of the
whole Constitution.
However, it is assumed that while the issue of
Union is so contentious, other chapters in the Draft Constitution are
not contentious, so they may not consume a lot of time. Nevertheless, we
should not overlook other significant Articles in the Draft
Constitution although are not so contentious like the issue of the Union
structure, but are also basic for building the fabric society for the
betterment of our nation for many centuries to come.
When CA began formal deliberations on the Draft
Constitution a month ago, they opted to begin with Chapter One and
Chapter Six. The rationale behind this was that those two chapters are
the foundation of the whole Draft Constitution and thus members of the
CA could not do anything else without first agreeing on the structure of
the Union between Tanganyika and Zanzibar as proposed in the Draft
Constitution vis-à-vis the current Union structure.
Today, I want critically to comment on the
decision made by some CA members in particular CCM members for removing
some of the core values enshrined in the Draft constitution and
replacing them with their own. Article 5 of the Draft Constitution
comprises the national core values: dignity, patriotism, integrity,
unity, transparency, accountability and Kiswahili Language.
Among those seven, CCM members, who are also
members of the CA proposed integrity, transparency and accountability be
removed from the Draft Constitution because they are too personal,
hence have no constitutional status. Furthermore, I heard one member
arguing that core values should not be enshrined in the Constitution
because sooner or later they may become obsolete and necessitate
amendment of the Constitution; rather they may be included in a law,
which can easily be amended at any time.
The reasons advanced by CCM members in proposing
the removal of integrity, transparency and accountability and retain the
rest values in the Draft Constitution does not make any sense either.
For instance, what is a difference between patriotism and integrity?
Both are personal values of an individual person. If a person is not
patriotic, he or she will also not to be a person of integrity! A simple
analysis may convince somebody that integrity is everything. A person
of integrity can’t lack patriotism. It is practically impossible to be a
person of integrity and lack patriotism at the same time.
In these days when we are talking a lot about good
governance, we cannot stay away from having these three elements and
still claim that we are building good governance! If you visit web sites
of our ministries and government agencies, including non-governmental
organisations and media houses hardly can you miss integrity as one of
the core values. This by itself proves beyond doubt that integrity is an
essential element of good governance today. Integrity in a broader
sense is opposite to corruption. We thus, cannot get rid of corruption
unless we inculcate integrity in ourselves.
Likewise, transparency and accountability are also
essential elements of any good governance. A good government is the one
whose system is transparent for its citizenry to see and appreciate it.
Lack of transparency in any government means that the government is not
of the people, by the people and for the people, rather it may be a
government of a few elite in power for their own benefit. The government
of the people gets its authority from the people and is accountable to
them. This should be a constitutional requirement.
The Constitution is the only legal document that
can easily be disposable to the people of all walks of life for reading
and understanding and that is why we are making it simple in terms of
language and also in Kiswahili which every Tanzanian can read and
understand. The reason why the Constitutional Review Commission (CRC)
decided to include Article 5 on core values is because of the obvious
erosion of ethics and values in our today’s society.
The CRC in their document of analysis of each
Article - Memorandum - say that, the core values were proposed by the
people themselves because of rampant corruption in the country, which is
a result of the erosion of values. The CRC goes on saying that, the
significance of having the core values in the Constitution is to make
them well known to the current generation, which has a responsibility to
replicate the same to the next generation. Thus, the originality of
these core values in the Draft Constitution is from the citizens
themselves. Why members of CCM now want to remove them from the Draft
Constitution? All who are against these three values to be in
Constitution are people, who already are corrupt and who feel guilty of
having these core values in the Constitution. We should right away
condemn them.
We are detailing our Constitution because we want
it to be a law book for our children to learn it in schools and from
there we begin to set a firm foundation for having a society of
integrity, transparency and accountability as a good weapon in fighting
against corruption. Our leaders are not accountable today even when they
mess up things because we do not have the Constitution, which enshrines
accountability. As Africans, we are failing to develop because we
embrace corruption and that is why the members of the ruling party are
afraid of the core values be part of our Constitution.
By removing integrity, transparency and
accountability in the Draft Constitution, we are making a war against
corruption be more illusive and impossible to win just like one Nigerian
said: “It will, I believe generally be agreed that eradication of
corruption from any society is not just a difficult task, it is without
dispute, an impossible objective.” (Obafemi Awolowo (1909-1987),
Nigerian Lawyer and Politician, August, 18, 1975
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