opinion
A momentous process is on the cards this end of November, and not too many people are paying attention.
This will be the
civic election, which is supposed to provide the Tanzanian people with
representatives that will direct the affairs of the country at civic
level, the aldermen and councillors to serve in our villages, towns,
cities and district authorities.
The importance of
this process lies not only in the fact that it renews our governance
structures at the most basic level, but that it also affords us a
glimpse into the strengths of the various political parties as they
ready themselves for the Big One, the general election slated for the
year 2020.
But, alas, it may
not be what I state it to be, because we live in a world with a
competition deficit, wherein one party has been given free rein to do
politics where the others have been all but interdicted.
The interdiction
has come in the form of the head of state, President John Pombe
Magufuli, in effect declaring a ban on all political activities except
those practised by representatives in their respective constituencies.
This would mean--or
would it not?--that a member of parliament is allowed to carry out
activities only in his/her constituency, ditto for a councilor in
his/her ward, etc.
But what would that
mean for a political leader, say a national leader of a political party
who does not hold a constituency seat?
My reading of that
is that he would not qualify to engage in any political activity
anywhere. Now, that is not the constitution and that is not the law.
It is only the
diktat of the president, but it seems to hold, because opposition
politicians have tended to err on the side of caution and avoid
confrontation with a police force that has recently made it clear it
will clobber anyone who tries to be clever.
In the meantime, the ruling party is having a field day, even though it suffers a serious lack of competition in that field.
Ruling party
cadres, including the president, are crisscrossing the country without
hindrance and the messages sent out to the electorate carry one message:
Only Magufuli can transform this country, only CCM can run this country
as it should be run.
The practice has
been to run off the list of big projects that Magufuli is supposedly
implementing, even when sometimes these are projects inherited from his
predecessors.
I have no problem
with people thinking that President Magufuli is a great man, but at
least let the others who may not agree with that assessment have their
say.
A man could be
great without necessarily having to ram it down the throats of those who
beg to differ, and a lot of times when signs appear of people trying to
force people to accept such things without question, I know I am
looking at problems whose magnitude we cannot even fathom presently.
Magufuli is doing
some great things, but there is no reason to think that he is
supernatural, that he is infallible, that he is a Messiah without whom
this country cannot survive.
I believe that even
he should be the first one to tell these sycophants to shut the damn
up, because he knows only too well that what they are doing is try to
ingratiate themselves with him for their personal shameful gain.
What happens in
these civic elections will give us an idea of what next year's general
election will look like, not only in terms of political performance, but
in the sense of fairness that can be observed in the very conduct of
the elections.
If it looks like
the ruling party was left to play foul and run amok while the opposition
parties were severely trammeled, muzzled and blinkered, the victory of
the ruling party will be hollow to that extent of that trammeling,
muzzling and blinking.
Having elections
that mean nothing at all is worse than having no elections at all,
because then elections become another occasion for creating dissentions,
hate and animosity.
They serve as
syringes that inject poisons into the bloodstream of the body politic
that slowly but surely encourage morbidity and eventually kill the whole
system.
Who can possibly
benefit from such a scenario except those who don't love this country,
with all their claims to being patriots? This November and next year, we
shall watch.
Jenerali Ulimwengu is chairman of the board of the Raia Mwema newspaper and an advocate of the High Court in Dar es Salaam.
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