Warioba: Focus on issues of national interest only

MASEMBE TAMBWE

Former Prime Minister, Judge Joseph Warioba

TANZANIANS have been urged to give prominence to issues of national interest by electing patriotic leaders instead of being overtaken by party ambitions to seize powers.

Speaking at the 7th convocation symposium of the University of Dar es Salaam on reflections on post 2015 general elections: elections, experience, shortfall, lessons gained and the way forward, the Convocation President and former Prime Minister, Judge Joseph Warioba said that leaders today dwelt on matters related to their parties and forget about issues of national interest.

“We need to come to a point where we keep away from political prejudice or fanaticism and focus on solution to challenges facing the nation such as corruption, ethnicity in politics likely to engulf the nation,” he said.

Judge Warioba said that from the four-hour symposium, he deduced that the issue of having an independent electoral commission was still passionate among the people but cautioned that even if given all the freedom, building national ethics was very important to meet the purpose.

Commenting on ways to allow growth of democracy in the country, Mr Warioba said weaknesses discerned during election campaign period should be abandoned and politicians should work together to build this great nation.

One of the presenters of the symposium, Dr Ayoub Rioba speaking on the role of civil society and the media said that as compared to other past elections, the media performed well in the October 2015 elections though they were some areas where they didn’t do very well.

Dr Rioba underscored the need for the establishment of an organization to educate the media on election reporting and on democracy as many journalists performed their duties without a clear picture on election matters.

The discussant of his paper, Prof Bernadeta Killian said that by and large she agreed with Dr Rioba’s paper particularly on the good job of the media especially when taking into consideration that a year prior elections, the country was at crossroads with the new constitution, the constitution referendum, BVR registration of the electorate without enough budget.

Prof Killian said as far as civil societies were concerned, their reliance on donor funds and the UNDP basket fund not being there this year, delayed many from performing their civic duties and didn’t cover a big area.