Can Fragile Opposition Defeat CCM?
By Guardian on Sunday team, Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania
15th August 2010
Strategists within the ruling party are weighing their options after Dr Wilbrod Slaa's unexpected decision to challenge the incumbent President Jakaya Kikwete in the October 31 general election. Dr Slaa's sudden announcement may narrow President Kikwete's chances for a second landslide victory, according to political analysts who see the Chadema candidate as the only serious threat to the ruling party, Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM). Dr Slaa, who was officially endorsed by his party on Thursday, has 15 years of experience as a Member of Parliament representing the opposition.
Strategists within the ruling party are weighing their options after Dr Wilbrod Slaa's unexpected decision to challenge the incumbent President Jakaya Kikwete in the October 31 general election.
Dr Slaa's sudden announcement may narrow President Kikwete's chances for a second landslide victory, according to political analysts who see the Chadema candidate as the only serious threat to the ruling party, Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM).
Dr Slaa, who was officially endorsed by his party on Thursday, has 15 years of experience as a Member of Parliament representing the opposition. He is well known for putting out a ‘list of shame' in 2007 naming allegedly corrupt ministers and key party officials, which prompted a series of legal threats against Dr Slaa by those accused.
Despite vows that they would sue him for defamation, none of them went to court and the ‘list of shame' was deemed accurate, earning Dr Slaa credibility as an anti-graft crusader in a country where corruption eats up a third of the nation's annual $9billion budget.
The October 31 poll is the fourth general election since the single party system ended 18 years ago. But nearly two decades since multiple parties were allowed in Tanzania, the opposition has failed to ‘oust' Africa's oldest ruling party, amid growing public outcry that the latter has failed to bring economic prosperity.
Despite graft allegations in the recent primaries and a spate of internal divisions and power grabs amid the Richmond energy scandal - which cost former Prime Minister Edward Lowassa and two other cabinet ministers their jobs - CCM still looks strong and in position to win this year's election.
Just two weeks before the official kickoff of the campaign, an electoral frenzy is sweeping Tanzania.
At stake are the two top political prizes – the presidencies of the Union and Zanzibar as well as spots in the separate legislatures of the two constituents of the United Republic, and, at the grassroots level, councillorships.
CCM is hell-bent to retain power in both the Union and on the Zanzibar archipelago, and a handful of opposition parties are equally determined to unseat the party that has reigned for as long as the country has been independent – nearly 49 years.
The ruling party, which claims almost 32 percent of the country's registered voters, has substantial financial backing contributed by its billionaire lobbyists and network of nearly 4.5 million members countrywide. Meanwhile, the opposition parties have remained largely diffused and strapped for cash as they struggled to gain traction outside of urban areas.
CCM was borne of a merger, in 1977, between the Tanganyikan independence struggle party, TANU, and the Isles' Afro Shirazi Party (ASP), while the opposition parties were introduced for the first time on July 1, 1992.
Expectations that the opposition parties would loosen CCM's grip on the country, as in Zambia and Kenya, haven't materialised, and there are no indications that, that could happen in the near future, let alone just three months from now.
Initially, there was considerable panic amongst CCM heavyweights that the opposition would unite and overtake the ruling party. The fear was rooted in a general feeling that successive CCM administrations had failed to improve the country's economy and social welfare, as evidenced by the abject poverty to which the majority of citizens are still subjected.
Tanzania is in the bottom ten percent of the world's economies in terms of per capita income, with an estimated Gross Domestic Product of $22.1 billion or $550 per capital income The opposition has failed to capitalise on the opportunities the ruling party's failings have left open, however, and no party has yet to elevate its politics above empty slogans and platitudes.
Opposition veterans like Augusine Mrema, James Mapalala, Christopher Mtikila and Mabere Marando have excelled at politicking rather than the more crucial task of proposing viable policies for lifting the country out of poverty. They pulled crowds, but in the end voters denied them their ballots, instead following ‘the devil you know' principle and sticking with CCM.
Mrema, the 1995 crowd puller, has since left the business of presidency, and instead, decided to vie for the parliamentary seat in his Moshi home. To Marando, a former spy and a lawyer, who was among the few politicians who initiated political reforms in early 1990s, has abandoned his party and joined Chadema.
Though he is viewed as the author of political reforms in Tanzania, his background as a spy cast doubt on whether he is really a man on mission or catalyst for real political change in the country.
To Reverend Mtikila, his slogan of ‘time for liberation is now' has mainly been overshadowed by dozens of court cases during the past two decades. Though he has announced to vie for the presidency ahead of the October general election, his impact won't bring any serious changes in the way voters cast their ballots.
There's a well renowned economist, Professor Ibrahim Lipumba, who has attempted three times unsuccessfully to become the country's president.
Though his party, Civic United Front, has given the ruling party a tough moment in the Indian Ocean archipelago during the past one and half decades, in the Mainland, the performance has been abysmal and disappointing.
He has also declared to face President Kikwete during this year's election adding more disunity within the opposition corridors.
While the majority of Tanzanians would like to see a united opposition with a single candidate and aggressive campaign countrywide, to the ruling party the divisions serves better than a united opposition.
The electorate seemed to rationalize that shortcomings notwithstanding CCM is systematic and methodical. It has a countrywide structure with an elaborate hierarchical system that began at the cell level up to the highest decision-making organs – the Central Committee, National Executive Committee and National Congress.
More fundamentally, it has a periodically reviewed manifesto that acts like a compass for its members and the nation. The electorate's enduring support for CCM has also drawn from its relatively realistic task lists during successive five-year terms.
The undoing of the opposition, on the other hand, is partly a consequence of unrealistic approaches and cynical sentiments. Examples include promising to introduce a helicopter ambulance service for expecting mothers, and converting Tanzania from an aid recipient to a donor country.
Another let-down for the opposition is the perennial wrangling, factionalism, and power-mongering amongst leaders, prompting members and potential members to become disillusioned, withdraw or defect to other parties.
Attendant to that is the apparent ‘Me-I' cancer, whereby particular individuals perceive themselves as the natural chairmen of their respective parties, run affairs as though the entities are private companies, brook no opposition, and bull-doze members into fielding them as presidential candidates in five-year cycles.
The public appeal for NCCR-Mageuzi (originally led by Mrema and subsequently, Mabere Marando and James Mbatia) ebbed progressively for those and related reasons, as it has for the Civic United Front (CUF).
A combination of power-hunger and stubbornness has also delayed the opposition from the realisation that joining forces and forming one strong bloc offers better prospects for defeating CCM at the polls.
A largely ignored factor, too, is that CCM is deeply entrenched, right up to the most remote village, and most Tanzanians in rural areas may be ignorant or wary of opposition parties that are predominately urban-based.
The result is that many wananchi feel betrayed and the betrayal finds an expression in sticking with CCM.
Above all, however, incumbency as a long-running ruling party makes CCM much more formidable, for it has the government's resources, logistical machinery, and more manpower at its disposal. The opposition may thus increase its tally in ‘Bunge', but the presidency appears a long shot.
Benefiting from divisions, graft scandals
The opposition can't make much headway by expecting to profit from the presumed splits within CCM, since the party has crafty tactics for healing wrongs, its stalwarts apparently keen to keep at bay the Nyerere prophecy that a credible opposition party could only emerge from a splintered CCM.
The opposition's fortunes can thus only hinge on earnest cultivation of its presence and consolidation at the grassroots, de-emphasise power ambitions, stop petty squabbles, and cleanse the outfits of the government subsidy-mongering image.
To its credit, the opposition, mainly due to fire-spitting MPs like Dr Slaa and Zitto Kabwe, has shaken up the government as an agency accountable to taxpayers, and kept it on lighter toes. And revelation of action on, and fall-out from, scandals like Richmond have been thanks to a vibrant opposition.
One of the by-products of opposition-driven debate has been the condemnation of bribery, previously sugar-coated as ‘takrima' (African hospitality). Hence the big exposure of the corruption practices during the recent CCM primaries, prompting the Prevention and Combating of Corruption Bureau officers to work overtime.
Today, the opposition heads to the polls with a very clean record of fighting corruption, while CCM seems to be worried by the allegations of corruption that have marred the country over the past few years. Though there are other presidential candidates from the opposition parties, it's Dr Slaa who seems to stand the greatest chance of shaking Kikwete's campaign team.
Defected from the ruling party in 1995 after massive foul play during the primary, Dr. Slaa has since given the ruling party and its regime a tough time especially in Kikwete's five years in office.
Dr Slaa a Roman catholic priest who left the alter for the political podium managed to penetrate the ruling clique, giving him access to classified information that he has used to discredit the government publicly.
Worried by his access to classified dossiers, it's alleged that in February last year Dr Slaa's hotel room was bugged by spies whose intention was to detect the moles who have been feeding him insider information on the ruling party's actions.
No matter what happens, things will certainly not be the same again for CCM. The party's ‘mwenzetu' era of protecting even notorious wrongdoers, is verily coming to an end, as the party can't risk its credibility being further tarnished and have more of its members defect.
President Kikwete, an economist and political scientist, is also expected to use his economic record over the past five years as well as his anti-corruption crusade to defend his performance at State House.
Currently, his campaign team is gathering key dossiers to counter any attacks from Dr Slaa, who has declared that he has 20 scandals to bring down the ruling party in October. President Kikwete who scored a landslide victory with over 80 percent of the vote in 2005 has weathered a number of storms since his election, including the Central Bank's External Payments Arrears account scandal and the fraudulent Richmond power deal.
During that period, he lost one of his close allies, Edward Lowassa, and three key cabinet ministers who were forced to resign after being named in the energy scam and the controversial BAE radar deal.
In 2008, President Kikwete followed in the path of leaders from Zambia, Malawi, South Africa and Nigeria by arresting and prosecuting top individuals alleged to have been involved in corrupt deals, opening a floodgate of speculation across the country over who could be the next target of investigation.
Again in 2009, his government arrested, prosecuted and finally jailed, Amatus Liyumba, the BoT's former director of personnel, in connection with the shady twin towers project that cost taxpayers a bloated $400 million, up from the initial budget of $70 million.
In a country with so many scandals and so little headway made in mitigating them, President Kikwete has had little choice but to show a willingness to combat grand corruption seriously and aggressively.
But to his opponents, Kikwete's commitment is still questionable as long as some of the companies that looted billions, like Kagoda Agricultural Company, are let off the hook.
Some of the still pending files include those on the BAE radar deal, the Buzwagi Mineral Development Agreement contract, the Richmond energy contract, and dubious deals involving Kiwira coal and Meremeta Gold Mine.
With most of these scandals being committed during the third phase regime, however, there are very slim chances that those who masterminded the scams will be arrested and prosecuted fully while the same administration is still in power.
SOURCE: GUARDIAN ON SUNDAY
By Guardian on Sunday team, Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania
15th August 2010
Strategists within the ruling party are weighing their options after Dr Wilbrod Slaa's unexpected decision to challenge the incumbent President Jakaya Kikwete in the October 31 general election. Dr Slaa's sudden announcement may narrow President Kikwete's chances for a second landslide victory, according to political analysts who see the Chadema candidate as the only serious threat to the ruling party, Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM). Dr Slaa, who was officially endorsed by his party on Thursday, has 15 years of experience as a Member of Parliament representing the opposition.
Strategists within the ruling party are weighing their options after Dr Wilbrod Slaa's unexpected decision to challenge the incumbent President Jakaya Kikwete in the October 31 general election.
Dr Slaa's sudden announcement may narrow President Kikwete's chances for a second landslide victory, according to political analysts who see the Chadema candidate as the only serious threat to the ruling party, Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM).
Dr Slaa, who was officially endorsed by his party on Thursday, has 15 years of experience as a Member of Parliament representing the opposition. He is well known for putting out a ‘list of shame' in 2007 naming allegedly corrupt ministers and key party officials, which prompted a series of legal threats against Dr Slaa by those accused.
Despite vows that they would sue him for defamation, none of them went to court and the ‘list of shame' was deemed accurate, earning Dr Slaa credibility as an anti-graft crusader in a country where corruption eats up a third of the nation's annual $9billion budget.
The October 31 poll is the fourth general election since the single party system ended 18 years ago. But nearly two decades since multiple parties were allowed in Tanzania, the opposition has failed to ‘oust' Africa's oldest ruling party, amid growing public outcry that the latter has failed to bring economic prosperity.
Despite graft allegations in the recent primaries and a spate of internal divisions and power grabs amid the Richmond energy scandal - which cost former Prime Minister Edward Lowassa and two other cabinet ministers their jobs - CCM still looks strong and in position to win this year's election.
Just two weeks before the official kickoff of the campaign, an electoral frenzy is sweeping Tanzania.
At stake are the two top political prizes – the presidencies of the Union and Zanzibar as well as spots in the separate legislatures of the two constituents of the United Republic, and, at the grassroots level, councillorships.
CCM is hell-bent to retain power in both the Union and on the Zanzibar archipelago, and a handful of opposition parties are equally determined to unseat the party that has reigned for as long as the country has been independent – nearly 49 years.
The ruling party, which claims almost 32 percent of the country's registered voters, has substantial financial backing contributed by its billionaire lobbyists and network of nearly 4.5 million members countrywide. Meanwhile, the opposition parties have remained largely diffused and strapped for cash as they struggled to gain traction outside of urban areas.
CCM was borne of a merger, in 1977, between the Tanganyikan independence struggle party, TANU, and the Isles' Afro Shirazi Party (ASP), while the opposition parties were introduced for the first time on July 1, 1992.
Expectations that the opposition parties would loosen CCM's grip on the country, as in Zambia and Kenya, haven't materialised, and there are no indications that, that could happen in the near future, let alone just three months from now.
Initially, there was considerable panic amongst CCM heavyweights that the opposition would unite and overtake the ruling party. The fear was rooted in a general feeling that successive CCM administrations had failed to improve the country's economy and social welfare, as evidenced by the abject poverty to which the majority of citizens are still subjected.
Tanzania is in the bottom ten percent of the world's economies in terms of per capita income, with an estimated Gross Domestic Product of $22.1 billion or $550 per capital income The opposition has failed to capitalise on the opportunities the ruling party's failings have left open, however, and no party has yet to elevate its politics above empty slogans and platitudes.
Opposition veterans like Augusine Mrema, James Mapalala, Christopher Mtikila and Mabere Marando have excelled at politicking rather than the more crucial task of proposing viable policies for lifting the country out of poverty. They pulled crowds, but in the end voters denied them their ballots, instead following ‘the devil you know' principle and sticking with CCM.
Mrema, the 1995 crowd puller, has since left the business of presidency, and instead, decided to vie for the parliamentary seat in his Moshi home. To Marando, a former spy and a lawyer, who was among the few politicians who initiated political reforms in early 1990s, has abandoned his party and joined Chadema.
Though he is viewed as the author of political reforms in Tanzania, his background as a spy cast doubt on whether he is really a man on mission or catalyst for real political change in the country.
To Reverend Mtikila, his slogan of ‘time for liberation is now' has mainly been overshadowed by dozens of court cases during the past two decades. Though he has announced to vie for the presidency ahead of the October general election, his impact won't bring any serious changes in the way voters cast their ballots.
There's a well renowned economist, Professor Ibrahim Lipumba, who has attempted three times unsuccessfully to become the country's president.
Though his party, Civic United Front, has given the ruling party a tough moment in the Indian Ocean archipelago during the past one and half decades, in the Mainland, the performance has been abysmal and disappointing.
He has also declared to face President Kikwete during this year's election adding more disunity within the opposition corridors.
While the majority of Tanzanians would like to see a united opposition with a single candidate and aggressive campaign countrywide, to the ruling party the divisions serves better than a united opposition.
The electorate seemed to rationalize that shortcomings notwithstanding CCM is systematic and methodical. It has a countrywide structure with an elaborate hierarchical system that began at the cell level up to the highest decision-making organs – the Central Committee, National Executive Committee and National Congress.
More fundamentally, it has a periodically reviewed manifesto that acts like a compass for its members and the nation. The electorate's enduring support for CCM has also drawn from its relatively realistic task lists during successive five-year terms.
The undoing of the opposition, on the other hand, is partly a consequence of unrealistic approaches and cynical sentiments. Examples include promising to introduce a helicopter ambulance service for expecting mothers, and converting Tanzania from an aid recipient to a donor country.
Another let-down for the opposition is the perennial wrangling, factionalism, and power-mongering amongst leaders, prompting members and potential members to become disillusioned, withdraw or defect to other parties.
Attendant to that is the apparent ‘Me-I' cancer, whereby particular individuals perceive themselves as the natural chairmen of their respective parties, run affairs as though the entities are private companies, brook no opposition, and bull-doze members into fielding them as presidential candidates in five-year cycles.
The public appeal for NCCR-Mageuzi (originally led by Mrema and subsequently, Mabere Marando and James Mbatia) ebbed progressively for those and related reasons, as it has for the Civic United Front (CUF).
A combination of power-hunger and stubbornness has also delayed the opposition from the realisation that joining forces and forming one strong bloc offers better prospects for defeating CCM at the polls.
A largely ignored factor, too, is that CCM is deeply entrenched, right up to the most remote village, and most Tanzanians in rural areas may be ignorant or wary of opposition parties that are predominately urban-based.
The result is that many wananchi feel betrayed and the betrayal finds an expression in sticking with CCM.
Above all, however, incumbency as a long-running ruling party makes CCM much more formidable, for it has the government's resources, logistical machinery, and more manpower at its disposal. The opposition may thus increase its tally in ‘Bunge', but the presidency appears a long shot.
Benefiting from divisions, graft scandals
The opposition can't make much headway by expecting to profit from the presumed splits within CCM, since the party has crafty tactics for healing wrongs, its stalwarts apparently keen to keep at bay the Nyerere prophecy that a credible opposition party could only emerge from a splintered CCM.
The opposition's fortunes can thus only hinge on earnest cultivation of its presence and consolidation at the grassroots, de-emphasise power ambitions, stop petty squabbles, and cleanse the outfits of the government subsidy-mongering image.
To its credit, the opposition, mainly due to fire-spitting MPs like Dr Slaa and Zitto Kabwe, has shaken up the government as an agency accountable to taxpayers, and kept it on lighter toes. And revelation of action on, and fall-out from, scandals like Richmond have been thanks to a vibrant opposition.
One of the by-products of opposition-driven debate has been the condemnation of bribery, previously sugar-coated as ‘takrima' (African hospitality). Hence the big exposure of the corruption practices during the recent CCM primaries, prompting the Prevention and Combating of Corruption Bureau officers to work overtime.
Today, the opposition heads to the polls with a very clean record of fighting corruption, while CCM seems to be worried by the allegations of corruption that have marred the country over the past few years. Though there are other presidential candidates from the opposition parties, it's Dr Slaa who seems to stand the greatest chance of shaking Kikwete's campaign team.
Defected from the ruling party in 1995 after massive foul play during the primary, Dr. Slaa has since given the ruling party and its regime a tough time especially in Kikwete's five years in office.
Dr Slaa a Roman catholic priest who left the alter for the political podium managed to penetrate the ruling clique, giving him access to classified information that he has used to discredit the government publicly.
Worried by his access to classified dossiers, it's alleged that in February last year Dr Slaa's hotel room was bugged by spies whose intention was to detect the moles who have been feeding him insider information on the ruling party's actions.
No matter what happens, things will certainly not be the same again for CCM. The party's ‘mwenzetu' era of protecting even notorious wrongdoers, is verily coming to an end, as the party can't risk its credibility being further tarnished and have more of its members defect.
President Kikwete, an economist and political scientist, is also expected to use his economic record over the past five years as well as his anti-corruption crusade to defend his performance at State House.
Currently, his campaign team is gathering key dossiers to counter any attacks from Dr Slaa, who has declared that he has 20 scandals to bring down the ruling party in October. President Kikwete who scored a landslide victory with over 80 percent of the vote in 2005 has weathered a number of storms since his election, including the Central Bank's External Payments Arrears account scandal and the fraudulent Richmond power deal.
During that period, he lost one of his close allies, Edward Lowassa, and three key cabinet ministers who were forced to resign after being named in the energy scam and the controversial BAE radar deal.
In 2008, President Kikwete followed in the path of leaders from Zambia, Malawi, South Africa and Nigeria by arresting and prosecuting top individuals alleged to have been involved in corrupt deals, opening a floodgate of speculation across the country over who could be the next target of investigation.
Again in 2009, his government arrested, prosecuted and finally jailed, Amatus Liyumba, the BoT's former director of personnel, in connection with the shady twin towers project that cost taxpayers a bloated $400 million, up from the initial budget of $70 million.
In a country with so many scandals and so little headway made in mitigating them, President Kikwete has had little choice but to show a willingness to combat grand corruption seriously and aggressively.
But to his opponents, Kikwete's commitment is still questionable as long as some of the companies that looted billions, like Kagoda Agricultural Company, are let off the hook.
Some of the still pending files include those on the BAE radar deal, the Buzwagi Mineral Development Agreement contract, the Richmond energy contract, and dubious deals involving Kiwira coal and Meremeta Gold Mine.
With most of these scandals being committed during the third phase regime, however, there are very slim chances that those who masterminded the scams will be arrested and prosecuted fully while the same administration is still in power.
SOURCE: GUARDIAN ON SUNDAY
