Kikwete pours cold water on Warioba draft, law process at stake

Tanzania's Constituent Assembly member Khamis Kigwangalah contributes to a debate on standing order. Photo/Emmanuel Herman 

By JENERALI ULIMWENGU

In Summary

• President Kikwete’s remarks have provoked debate from all sides. Those who oppose the three-tier government, especially within the ruling CCM, have praised his stance, while those supporting the creation of a government for Tanganyika have rejected his remarks.

President Jakaya Kikwete has effectively poured cold water on the second draft of the Tanzania constitution and thrown the proposals by his own appointed Constitution Review Commission (CRC) into the air.

Last week Friday in Dodoma, President Kikwete addressed the Constituent Assembly (CA) three days after CRC chairman Joseph Warioba had addressed it, and proceeded to discuss aspects of it, openly reiterating what was known to be CCM’s stand on the issue of the Union structure.

Although President Kikwete’s appearance in Parliament had been slated for earlier, before Mr Warioba was due to appear, the order was reversed so that Warioba spoke before the Constituent Assembly (CA) ahead of the president. This meant that if the president took a view that differed with that of the CRC, he would in effect be undermining the second draft and throwing the constitutional debate wide open.

That is what happened. Though President Kikwete was meant to inaugurate the CA and set it on its way, he chose to debate some of the proposals in the draft, casting doubt on their appropriateness for the Union. While he praised the CRC for its hard work, the president cast doubts as to the practicability of the proposed three-tier system of the Union.

“The proposal to have three governments — one governing Zanzibar, another Tanganyika and one governing the Union will not work because the Union government will have no resources; the resources will be in Zanzibar and in Tanganyika, and these two can only give their resources if and when they please,” he said.

President Kikwete even likened what might arise out of that system to what happened in the Soviet Union as it fell apart.

“That is what happened in the Soviet Union with (Mikhail Gorbachev’s policies of Glasnost and Perestroika. Once Russia was allowed to be autonomous like the other states within the Union. It became easy for (Boris) Yeltsin to declare his independence, and that was the end of the Soviet Union,” said the President.

He went further to hint at a possible military takeover: “You may get to a stage where the Union government has no resources except the military and security… army, police, prisons… these are not resources; they are not bankable. After some time you fail even to pay their salaries,” and (they take over).

President Kikwete’s remarks have provoked debate from all sides. Those who oppose the three-tier government, especially within the ruling CCM, have praised his stance, while those supporting the creation of a government for Tanganyika have rejected his remarks.

Many have suggested that he mistook the occasion, at which he was meant to inaugurate the CA, and instead lectured the delegates on a position that is known to be his party’s.

Zanzibar’s First Vice President and Secretary General of the opposition Civic United Front (CUF) Seiff Sharif Hamad said: “My brother and friend Jakaya missed the point; he was supposed to inaugurate the Constituent Assembly but instead he went partisan and put forward his party policies.”

He hinted at serious trouble to come. Echoing what Warioba had underlined in his presentation before the CA, Sharif said: “The Tanganyika government has the cloak of the Union. It’s important for people to know that we are not in any way going to even discuss the two tier-government put forward by Kikwete.”

In what has come to characterise the confused state of the political debate around the Union, Sharif said that “what the Zanzibaris want is sovereignty... and this is what we shall fight for. ...We shall fight for our rights with all the means at our disposal, and if anyone resorts to violence the ICC is watching.”

Other voices too have criticised President Kikwete. In a social media exchange, a retired senior diplomat regretted the lack of leadership shown in his speech.

“At the beginning he seemed to do the right thing; he was presidential and national in his approach, but soon he descended into his party’s position and abandoned all balance,” said the diplomat. “Kikwete’s father is CCM’s two-tier government, and there lies the problem.

 n a flurry of exchanges among various groups, President Kikwete’s speech was generally found wanting, many saying he should not have said what he did after the chairman of his own presidential commission had spoken before the CA.

A young academic at the University of Dar es Salaam said: “He is the one who chose the Commission; the Commission is his and Warioba is his chief agent. He had all the time to give his views on anything he had regarding what was contained in the draft.”

A Dar es Salaam-based business executive said the he found the president’s speech “impressive, confusing and contradictory” all at the same time.

He praised the president for his obvious grasp of the historical issues around the constitutional debate and current efforts at constitution-making but said he failed on the most important agenda of the day — how to deal with the divisive issue of the structure of the Union government.

“The president suddenly changed course and pushed the CA hard to adopt the party (CCM) line,” he said.

The businessman added that the president had reneged on his promise to respect the views of the people by suggesting that the CA could strike out any provision of the final draft it did not like, which “would be against the provisions of the law governing the process.”

A member of the CA has proposed that Mr Warioba be asked to return before the CA to respond to issues raised by the president in his speech.

However, the CA chairman Samuel Sitta rejected this suggestion, saying the assembly was competent enough to deal with the issues that had emerged without necessarily having Mr Warioba back.

READ: Kikwete vs Warioba: Tanzania at a crossroads

No doubt Mr Sitta did not savour having a slinging match between the head of state and his appointed commission, but the debate has taken a new turn that could jeopardise the whole exercise.

There seems to be a group of Zanzibaris who are dead set against the two-tier system, which is a “Nyerere relic” over which the founding father faced no opposition. But things have changed.

Seif Sharif Hamad said: “Kikwete tends to think he is a modern-time Nyerere, but he is deluding himself. There was only one Julius Nyerere, who spoke and everybody listened. No one can be Nyerere anymore because circumstances have changed, and Kikwete does not possess those powers.”

Between those on the mainland and those in Zanzibar who want a Tanganyika government in a three-tier Union structure, and those, mainly CCM stalwarts who want the continuation of the status quo, the constitution- making process finds itself between a rock and a hard place.