Mama Amon
JF-Expert Member
- Mar 30, 2018
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DP
A Video Clip for DP World Foundation from Dubai Handing Over 'Futari ' Gifts to Mbeya Muslims in Tanzania
I. Abstract
Based on a rich history of treaty making in the world for the past 2000 years, we argue that, the following are the fifteen dirty tricks which were used to get the Tanzania-Dubai Treaties signed and ratified, an event which has left the nation divided, and continues to divide it until now:
- Saying that the Treaty is not a contract
- Signing the Treaty with a willing dictator
- Using compliant politicians
- Using mental reservation and the doctrine of equivocation
- Making the contested treaty with yourself by using a double agents
- Using “the nibble principle” and “good cooperator, bad cooperator principle”
- Keeping the Treaty as a top state secret inaccessible by the cabinet the parliament or the general public
- Getting the contested treaty ratified by any means possible, legal or not, in order to bypass critics
- Sitting tight and applying constant pressure as and when possible, If you can’t get the Treaty ratified right away
- Skipping the ratification, by hooks or rooks
- Pre-empting the country’s constitution so that it indiscriminately accommodates itself to Treaties.
- Offering to share the cake and other promises
- Using threats, fake news dissemination and agenda swapping strategies
- Using dubious escape and termination provisions as “mousetrap clauses”
- Using a covert broker to conclude a treaty
II. Saying that a Treaty is not a contract
This strategy confuses the critics by calling a Treaty not a “contract,” but something like a convention, a treaty, an endorsement, an agreement, an accord, or whatever.
But, the truth of the matter is that, a contract is a an agreement having three essential attributes, namely: (a) the consent of two competent parties to the same thing, (b) which imposes upon each an obligation of commutative justice, (c) so that the obligation of one party is the cause of a right in the other, and vice versa, where, the mutuality of obligations is signified by such terms as "shall" and "must," where the Tanzania-Dubai Treaty meets these criteria.
III. Signing a Treaty with a willing dictator
The dictator’s signature, or that of one of his assistants, is all one needs to get the contested treaty through, without worrying that a democratic legislature might block the agreement.
IV. Using compliant politicians
If no willing dictator is available seek compliant politicians, since this is where there can be no reasonable doubt that such consent will be granted.
These politicians are expected to help push through the contested treaty because, for one reason or another, they are more beholden to the Treaty initiator than to their electorate.
Presidents nearing the end of their career are especially promising, since the Treaty initiator can offer them support if they run for domestic international offices.
V. Using mental reservation and the doctrine of equivocation
Here, one starts gradually by offering less and ambiguous information reluctant partners, and then revealing complete and accurate information to cooperative partners.
Some countries have historical reasons for being wary of signing and ratifying treaties with other countries. With such countries it is found best to move cautiously and cunningly, through a phased information dissemination process.
In this approach, strategy this involves revealing less information in a step by step manner, through several phases, where, most agreeable information is released firs, and the least agreeable information is released later.
Specifically, in international negotiations, the strategy involves revealing less information to the Parliament through an abstract treaty called IGA with a focus on an area of particular concern to the target country.
Then more information is revealed gradually via more concrete agreements called Host Government Agreements (HGAs), to the Cabinet.
This means that, the electorate representatives will be denied an opportunity to scrutinize the full scope of the agreements.
It is a strategy of divide and conquer strategy of neo-colonialism. Under this strategy, negotiation is made easier by using the principle of “mental reservation,” also known as “the doctrine of equivocation,” which allows one to knowingly mislead people “without being guilty of lying”.
This principle distinguishes between the following two definitions of “lying”: On one hand, “to lie is to speak or act against the truth in order to lead someone into error.” Call this the first definition of lying.
And on the other hand, “to lie is to speak or act against the truth in order to lead into error someone who has the right to know the truth.” Call this the second definition of lying.
The general teaching about “mental reservation” is that you are not permitted to tell a lie, as understood in terms of the second definition.
However, you can use an ambiguous expression realizing that the person who you are talking to will accept an untrue version of a statement, while foreseeing and permitting that to happen without directly intending it to happened, as the latter would be lying, as understood in terms of the second definition.
On our view, “mental reservation” when used in negotiating treaties by gradually offering ambiguous information to reluctant parties, entails the use an ambiguous expression while realizing that the person who you are talking to will accept an untrue version of whatever it may be, while foreseeing and directly intending that to happen.
This is an act of lying, as understood in terms of the second definition. Hence, “mental reservation” is an evil means which is here deployed to achieve a good or evil end.
VI. Making the contested treaty with oneself by using double agents
A double agent is an agent who is employed and controlled by one country, whose primary purpose is supposed to spy on a target country for the benefit of the controlling country, but who then starts spying on one's own controlling country for the benefit of the target country, after the target country has persuaded him to secretly switch sides and turn against the target country.
When it comes to negotiating treaties, the treaty initiating country will work strategically deploy double agents who an assist in the negotiation process by pretending to be acting on behalf of the target country, while in fact, they are working for the treaty initiating country.
Double agents can give the appearance of negotiating on behalf of a target nation, whereas they actually belong to the treaty initiating country to which they owe allegiance through some secret vows. Such double agents may turn up as signatories on a contested treaty, raising the question: on whose behalf were they really negotiating?
VII. Using “the nibble principle” and “good cooperator, bad cooperator principle”
One of the best-known negotiation tactics is: “good cop, bad cop”. First the aggressive “bad cop” increases the stress level of the target victim, and then the friendly “good cop” makes him feel relieved and grateful, and thereby wins concessions.
According to this principle. You must know what to ask for, but be careful about when you ask for it. There are times to press ahead and times to wait.
You will also want to keep back certain items on your want list until the very last minute when the other party is vulnerable.
And it can even be useful to let a hardline negotiator precede you, so that you can appear kind and reasonable and harness the gratitude for this in order to finally get the contested treaty moving.
The “nibble” principle is a technique of making last-minute demands for further “slight changes”.
VIII. Keeping the Treaty as a top state secret inaccessible by the cabinet the parliament or the general public
This rules requires one to kep the Treaty as a top state secret at least until it is signed by the Head of state or his assistant, and sometimes forever without showing the public what's going on and without letting interested parties provide detailed feedback.
This strategy presents the legislators with an accomplished fact. An accomplished fact is a thing that has already happened or been decided before those affected hear about it, leaving them with no option but to accept it.
So, with a Treaty document already signed by their head of state, it follows that, the majority members of the ruling party can no longer question or amend it.
That's because signing expresses consent to the text of treaty, even though it doesn't mean absolute willingness to be bound by it. And after the contested treaty having been signed by their own leader, the rejection by the ruling party is hard political option.
IX. Getting the contested treaty ratified by any means possible, legal or not, in order to bypass critics
According to this principle, once the contested treaty is signed, its promoters should try to schedule it to be ratified within a few days, if possible. This prevents a proper parliamentary debate, cuts off public discussion and leaves no time for outside legal experts to examine a complicated document written in opaque language.
X. Sit tight and applying constant pressure as and when possible, if you can’t get the Treaty ratified right away
An upcoming election may make the government seek support of the treaty imitator, or perhaps a government more friendly to the treaty imitator will come into power.
This strategy works fine if time is on your side. This principle works fine for monarchial states whose leaders may stay in office indefinitely.
XI. Skipping the ratification, by hooks or rooks
With dictators, there may be a rubber-stamped ratification by their governments, or even no separate ratification at all. The very act of signing amounts to ratification of the treaty with some dictators.
In some cases ratification is concealed by using technical Latin legal language, which states that, the treaty will come into effect automatically on the same day it is signed, for example.
XII. Pre-empting the country’s constitution so that it indiscriminately accommodates itself to Treaties
According to this strategy, if you can have time to get your contested treaty signed, but not ratified, you will have a legally accomplished fact, where the constitution or other basic laws must accommodate themselves to the Treaty, rather than vice versa.
This way some treaty initiators do influence the country’s most basic legal structure by overtly pressing for constitutional amendments that will promote or prevent the inclusion certain human rights and duties that will accommodate the contents of a given Treaty.
Examples of such constitutional embedded clauses include “state religion clause,” “state ideology clause,” or “freedom of conscience clause.”
Each of these clauses is a type of a general clause affirming “treaty precedence over domestic laws,” stating that, “treaties shall take precedence over domestic legislations.”
For example, article 7(5) of the 1992 Constitution of the Slovak Republic states that; “International treaties on human rights and fundamental freedoms and international treaties for whose exercise a law is not necessary, and international treaties which directly confer rights or impose duties on natural persons or legal persons and which were ratified and promulgated in the way laid down by a law shall have precedence over laws.”
And article 10 of the 1992 Czech Constitution says that, “Ratified and promulgated international accords on human rights and fundamental freedoms, to which the Czech Republic has committed itself, are immediately binding and are superior to law.”
XIII. Offering to share the cake and other promises
According to this principle, to win critics give them a slice so that you can keep the rest of the cake for yourself.
A company seeking Foreign Direct Investment in a foreign country will offer a huge portion of company shares to obedient natives so as to make it easier for it to penetrate the domestic market and gain quick acceptability across the political ladder. It will also announce strategic corporate social responsibility budget to win the hearts of many.
XIV. Using threats, fake news dissemination and agenda swapping strategies
According to this principle, in addition to behind the scenes pressures, public opinion can also be brought to bear on key politicians in order to nudge the negotiations along.
Public opinions may involve two things. First, branding the contested treaty positively by portraying g it as a toll for promoting human rights and development; amplifying its capacity to contribute to the spiritual and material welfare of mankind and to the common good; and highlighting the fact that, the contracting parties want to cooperate in order to build a more fraternal, peaceful and just society.
And secondly, they may try to blacken the name of any party that shows reluctance to accept it through name calling, misinformation, disinformation and malinformation, generally by implying that the critics are enemies of human rights, development, peace and so on.
XV. Using a dubious escape and termination provisions as “mousetrap clauses”
An “escape clause” allows one of the parties to the Treaty to cancel its badness by promising a vacuous possibility of its termination or variation. Such clauses are smoothly phrased in terms of “mutual agreement” and “mutual re-negotiations.”
But its real trick is that any change, must have the consent of the head of the state that initiated the treaty. This effectively removes the contested treaty from judicial and parliamentary control and gives to natural persons veto power over any termination or alterations.
Under such circumstances, it is simply primitive and naive to hope that there might be a chance to re-negotiate the Treaty. Once the treaty is signed and ratified under such terms, then the mousetrap has already snapped shut for ever.
This trap frees the Treaty from democratic control forever and lets you move on to the next one.
A mousetrap is an animal trap designed to catch and, usually, kill mice. Jaw mousetrap has a set of spring-loaded, cast-iron jaws.
The spring-loaded bar mousetrap is a simple device with a heavily spring-loaded bar and a trip to release it. Food such as oats, chocolate, bread, meat, and butter are also used.
The spring-loaded bar swings down rapidly and with great force when anything, usually a mouse, touches the trip. The design is such that the mouse's neck or spinal cord will be broken, or its ribs or skull crushed, by the force of the bar. This is what cunning treaty initiators do to the target country.
XVI. Using a covert broker to conclude a treaty
Under this principle, the treaty initiating country adds camouflage by making the agreement, not directly with the target country, but with an intermediate country that is remotely controlled by the treaty initiating country. In this case, the intermediate country is merely a covert broker on behalf of the treaty initiating country.
It is for this reason, some countries sign treaties with Arabs but the projects under the treaties are managed by Europeans and Americans.
XVII. Our take: Key conclusions and recommendations
Almost 90 percent of the 15 tricks mentioned above were used by Dubai investors to get their Treaty signed and ratified by Tanzania. Only domestication is pending.
In effect, these tricks reveal the extent by which these investors either have or lack respect for Tanzanians.
On this point, we want to make our considered conclusion in light of what some great philosophers have said about Africans.
According to Cornel West (1999:83-84), in his book, “Cornel West Reader,” as published by Basic Civitas Book, in the United States, a long time ago, David Hume of England suspected “the negroes … to be naturally inferiors to whites.”
He argued that, “there never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation.”
His conclusion followed from the fact that, amongst negroes “no ingenious manufactures amongst them, no arts, no science.”
Again, West (1999:83-84) reports that, Emmanuel Kant of Germany similarly argued that, “the negroes of Africa have by nature no feeling that rises above the trifling.”
On his view, “So fundamental is the difference between the two races of man, and it appears to be as great in regard to mental capacities as in color.”
It is our considered assessment that, the decision by the State House and the Parliament of Tanzania, to sign and ratify the Tanzania-Dubai Treaty, without regard to the compelling need for respecting our state sovereignty, may confirm the logic behind the disrespect that Hume, Kant and their likes had against Africans.
Tanzania can avoid this embarrassment by either amending the contents of the said Treaty, or by de-ratifying it, or abandoning it so that it dies a natural death.
Dubai investors can, and should, invest in Tanzania based on the prevailing legal framework, no more no less.
XVIII. References
- Cornel West (1999), Cornel West Reader (USA: Basic Civitas Book).
- J.P. Dobbert, “Evolution of the Treaty Making Capacity of International Organizations,” In; Jean Carroz (1987), The Law And The Sea (Italy; FAO).
- Raustiala, K. (1995). The Domestication of International Commitments: IIASA Working Paper (Austria: WP-95-115)
- A. O. Adede (2001), Domestication of International Obligations: Working Paper for Constitution of Kenya Review Commission (Nairobi: Kenya).
- Roland Minnerath (2000), “The Experience of the Catholic Church in Structuring its Relationship with States in the XX Century”, Istoricheskii Vestnik, Herald of History, no. 9-10.
Yours sincerely,
Mama Amon Desk,
“Sumbawanga Town”,
Sumbawanga,
Tanzania.
23 July 2023.
