Rutashubanyuma
JF-Expert Member
- Sep 24, 2010
- 219,470
- 911,173
(By Rutashubanyuma Nestory – A public policy analyst based in Arusha.)
Of lately, we have come to learn two more CCM cabinet ministers have successfully remonstrated to civil servants in their respective district councils and now are almost home and dry to secure their parliamentary seats!
These Honourables are no others but Minister Professors Mark Mwandosya and his constituent neighbour Mwakusya. They had lodged their petitions against Chadema opponents - and junior civil servants doubling as election invigilators have abided to ministerial cries of mercy which have led to erasure of those pesky Chadema threats.
While it is too early to evaluate the authenticity of the professors' successful petitions but one thing is audibly clear: The electoral process of incorporating civil servants as both supervisors and judges is irretrievably flawed abinitio.
From governmental chain of command, Ministers are bosses of all Regional and District civil servants. When the junior civil servants are temporarily incorporated as employees of National Election Commission – NEC – the electoral process becomes adulterated because the incumbent government is the one who will be judging the efficacy of the election while it is also an interested participant.
It calls to question; given the momentous importance of the national elections, why NEC does not have permanent staff and has to rely upon mercenaries masquerading as electoral invigilators. Civil servants are also interested parties in an election because their employment fate is also in the hands of the electoral victors. A loss of CCM will mean many incompetent civil servants will be shown the door.
It is a poorly held secret that top civil service jobs are rewarded to cronies and nepotism rather than merit defines appointments and promotions there. It will be naïve to regard our civil service as apolitical while we fully know it is a product of a pernicious culture of hiring "whom you know rather than what the applicant knows." Nowhere since the reintroduction of multiparty democracy in 1992 did a CCM electoral aspirant ever been disqualified by NEC!
As far as civil servants are concerned, CCM is our angel we can not do without and she is too smart to commit mistakes that have become synonymous with the opposition and in particular with Chadema. Chadema is a party most voters would want to see running this country but a combination of fraud and abuse of public resources are conspiring to deny her the governance place she fully deserves.
CCM stay in power is really not in the hands of voters but in the hands of ambiguous electoral laws and the illegal empowerment of the civil servants to run the show. After the election is a done deal do not be surprised to learn from international observers who will certify this election as free and fair because we peacefully queue and vote without a fickle of intimidation.
Electoral observers rarely assess the whole electoral process because they are more transfixed in melodrama and legitimizing political expedience. The electoral observers will not parse through NEC and see who is its appointer, who is funding it, where and how does it pick its employees. If international observers did ask themselves those vital questions then the October election will not pass the muster, at all.
Whereof the constitution enjoins this is a multiparty democracy, CCM parlaying her majority in the House had curved electoral laws that will ensure it is her civil service appointees who will be adjudging an election but not the electorate.
What the constitution has donated on the right hand CCM has snapped by the left hand. More than forty percent of cast votes in this election will have no say in our next five years of governance an ingratitude of CCM that has obstinately rejected proportional representation.
Worse enough, if you read CCM manifesto and her ten years' plan, governance reforms is not a priority, at all. CCM knows fully well now is the time to pass the torch to Chadema, a party geared to advance the rule of law.
To cap it all, CCM no longer believes in constitutional imperatives of self-reliance but promises development if and only if Uncle Sam extends an olive branch! How sad!
Of lately, we have come to learn two more CCM cabinet ministers have successfully remonstrated to civil servants in their respective district councils and now are almost home and dry to secure their parliamentary seats!
These Honourables are no others but Minister Professors Mark Mwandosya and his constituent neighbour Mwakusya. They had lodged their petitions against Chadema opponents - and junior civil servants doubling as election invigilators have abided to ministerial cries of mercy which have led to erasure of those pesky Chadema threats.
While it is too early to evaluate the authenticity of the professors' successful petitions but one thing is audibly clear: The electoral process of incorporating civil servants as both supervisors and judges is irretrievably flawed abinitio.
From governmental chain of command, Ministers are bosses of all Regional and District civil servants. When the junior civil servants are temporarily incorporated as employees of National Election Commission – NEC – the electoral process becomes adulterated because the incumbent government is the one who will be judging the efficacy of the election while it is also an interested participant.
It calls to question; given the momentous importance of the national elections, why NEC does not have permanent staff and has to rely upon mercenaries masquerading as electoral invigilators. Civil servants are also interested parties in an election because their employment fate is also in the hands of the electoral victors. A loss of CCM will mean many incompetent civil servants will be shown the door.
It is a poorly held secret that top civil service jobs are rewarded to cronies and nepotism rather than merit defines appointments and promotions there. It will be naïve to regard our civil service as apolitical while we fully know it is a product of a pernicious culture of hiring "whom you know rather than what the applicant knows." Nowhere since the reintroduction of multiparty democracy in 1992 did a CCM electoral aspirant ever been disqualified by NEC!
As far as civil servants are concerned, CCM is our angel we can not do without and she is too smart to commit mistakes that have become synonymous with the opposition and in particular with Chadema. Chadema is a party most voters would want to see running this country but a combination of fraud and abuse of public resources are conspiring to deny her the governance place she fully deserves.
CCM stay in power is really not in the hands of voters but in the hands of ambiguous electoral laws and the illegal empowerment of the civil servants to run the show. After the election is a done deal do not be surprised to learn from international observers who will certify this election as free and fair because we peacefully queue and vote without a fickle of intimidation.
Electoral observers rarely assess the whole electoral process because they are more transfixed in melodrama and legitimizing political expedience. The electoral observers will not parse through NEC and see who is its appointer, who is funding it, where and how does it pick its employees. If international observers did ask themselves those vital questions then the October election will not pass the muster, at all.
Whereof the constitution enjoins this is a multiparty democracy, CCM parlaying her majority in the House had curved electoral laws that will ensure it is her civil service appointees who will be adjudging an election but not the electorate.
What the constitution has donated on the right hand CCM has snapped by the left hand. More than forty percent of cast votes in this election will have no say in our next five years of governance an ingratitude of CCM that has obstinately rejected proportional representation.
Worse enough, if you read CCM manifesto and her ten years' plan, governance reforms is not a priority, at all. CCM knows fully well now is the time to pass the torch to Chadema, a party geared to advance the rule of law.
To cap it all, CCM no longer believes in constitutional imperatives of self-reliance but promises development if and only if Uncle Sam extends an olive branch! How sad!
