Kutoka gazetini.: Tulipo na tuendapo 2015

Nguruvi3

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Jun 21, 2010
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President Kikwete in deep meditation in this file photo when he toured the Tanzania Ports Authority last year. Following the recent outcome of this year`s general election, President Kikwete has a tough mission ahead 2015:
President Jakaya Kikwete was finally sworn in last week as the President of the United Republic of Tanzania, after scoring a narrow victory with 61 percent of a total 8.5 million votes on October 31.
But as he embarks on his second and last five-year term in office, Kikwete is now saddled with a wounded, shaken and somehow divided party as well as the list of multibillion-shilling development pledges that he made during the campaign period.
Though many have questioned his ability to fulfill the promises he made during his struggle to win votes, President Kikwete insists that he will deliver according to his party’s manifesto.
Kikwete admitted publicly last Saturday that his party had been shaken in the general election and called for a thorough analysis of what had transpired in order to rebuild CCM ahead of the 2015 general election.
What puzzled Kikwete most, he said, has been the dwindling support of his party in the Lake Zone regions, namely Mwanza, Shinyanga and Mara, where CCM has enjoyed massive support since independence. The region contributes about 50 percent of the eligible voters countrywide.
This region had historically been the stronghold of the ruling party, but suddenly it has shifted support to the opposition party, Chadema, indicating an undeniable blow to CCM’s reputation in the region and throughout the country.
After ruling the country for nearly five decades, it seems that Chama Cha Mapinduzi’s days are numbered, and it may just be the matter of time before one of Africa’s oldest parties joins the likes of the Kenya Africa National Union and other founding parties in Africa that have since fallen by the wayside.
Given the final results of last week’s general election, the writing is very clear on the wall: CCM might not still be in power in the next decade, and in the meantime its divisions could serve to bolster the Opposition camp in Tanzania.
The election was marred by a record-low voter turnout despite record-high numbers of registered voters – claimed earlier to be around 19.5 million voters – and accusations of rigging in some constituencies has prompted public ire, all signs that the once united and determined CCM is now facing the beginning of the end.
In last week’s election, only 8.9 million voters cast ballots – or just 47 percent of the total registered voters in Tanzania – a situation that raises more questions than answers.
For the first time in the history of the multiparty system in Tanzania, an incumbent President, Jakaya Kikwete, has been re-elected with fewer votes than he was elected with the first time, as Kikwete won only 61 percent of votes this year, compared to the landslide victory of 85 percent he scored in 2005.
In 1995, Benjamin Mkapa won with 61.5 percent of the vote, but he was re-elected five years later with 72 percent of the votes, after many were impressed by his major macroeconomic reforms that saw the country recover from recession.
But for the incumbent Kikwete – a man whose magical touch in the 2005 general election prompted some religious leaders to describe him as the  choice of God’ – these figures speak loudly about what the future holds for him and for the ruling party.
Taking into consideration CCM’s staggering campaign budget of $40 million (Sh60billion), its wide-reaching network of supporters and the aid of existing state machinery, not to mention well-coordinated media coverage, the figures don’t seem to match up.
Key cabinet ministers lost their constituencies and the ruling party lost key strongholds, thanks to internal divisions within CCM and an emerging army of young voters who have lost connections with and trust in the ruling clique.
For the first time areas which had been considered peaceful turned hostile against the State and the National Electoral Commission, after sensing a move to rig the election. In Mwanza, for instance, where the party lost two crucial constituencies, Nyamagana and Ilemela, angry voters nearly destroyed the country’s second biggest city.
The situation had grown so tense that the police boss in the region warned returning officers against tampering with official results because preliminary intelligence reports found evidence of planned petrol bombings in the city.
All these events clearly sum up one key message to CCM: reform now or risk losing the next election. If you look at neighbouring Kenya, analysts saw the downfall of the ruling party under Daniel Arap Moi coming from the first multiparty election in 1992, but Moi and his cadre did not anticipate that they would be thrown out of office.
Finally, the same man who had been defeated three times, Mwai Kibaki, defeated the ruling party in an overwhelming victory after he was supported by the country’s ‘king maker’, Raila Odinga in 2002, ending the era of perhaps Africa’s most corrupt and powerful party, KANU.
They say when God wants to destroy you he first makes you so mad that you cannot sense the danger you face, and that’s what happened in Kenya when Moi claimed to be the ‘Professor of Politics’ who couldn’t be defeated by the opposition as long as he had control of the army and Central Bank.
But when voters decided, neither the army nor the looted billions from the Central Bank were enough to save Moi and his party.
In Tanzania, where for the past five years CCM has navigated increasing turbulence caused by internal divisions and its failure to distance itself from serious graft cases, there could be more disaster in years to come for the party.
As a head of state and the chairman of the ruling party, Kikwete is the man tasked with ending the internal divisions that have cost CCM so dearly.
Having been groomed by the party from his early days after graduating from the University of Dar es Salaam, Kikwete is among the very few people who understands CCM better than the majority within and therefore he is expected to end the divisions.
Though Chama Cha Mapinduzi has for years brushed off intimations that the party was deeply divided, the storms it has gone through, which finally led to the major shakeup in the just ended general election show that Africa’s oldest ruling party has devolved into a handful of squabbling factions that seem to have little more in common than their card-carrying party status.
Enduring the shift from a single to multiparty system and maintaining its icon standing on the continent, CCM has weathered a number of storms in the past four decades of its history, but analysts say this recent scuffle and narrow victory is a telling symbol that could be harkening the beginning of the end for the party.
The party’s founder, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, spoke some prescient words when he was asked back in the 1990s where a strong and viable opposition party would spring from, now that Tanzania had opened itself to multiparty politics.
CCM’s real opponent, Mwalimu said, would come from within it.
Today it’s a divided, wounded and graft tainted party. This is the party President Kikwete will be leading for the next five years as the Chairman.
Failure to reform will justify more negative impacts than what transpired in this year’s election. The old notion that CCM will rule forever is no longer valid bearing in mind what has just come out of the ballot boxes.
But Kikwete also carries on his shoulders the hopes of millions of voters to whom he promised major social and economic improvements. The execution of these pledges will determine how the voters will cast their votes in 2015.
Though some analysts, mainly from the Opposition wing, have questioned how realistic it will be to implement all these pledges, Kikwete has insisted that he will deliver according to his voter promises.
Another burden that Kikwete inherits, is the war against grand corruption, which today eats up about a third of the country’s annual budget.
Though he allowed the arrest and prosecution of high profile individuals in 2008/9, many still question the commitment of Kiwkete’s administration when it comes to key scandals like the BAE radar deal, the BoT EPA account theft, and many more that have marred the previous and current administration.
Some of those accused of corruption have used the very same billions they stole to buy political positions in order to defend their illegally acquired wealth. Some are even eyeing top positions within the government as well as the ruling party.
This situation fuels public anger against the ruling party as many feel that there’s impunity for some individuals especially those with high connections to the ruling elite.
In order to regain the party’s dwindling glory, President Kikwete will have to ramp up the war against grand corruption in his last five years in office. On the other hand there is the growing number of young voters born in the mid-’80s and ’90s who believe in change no matter the cost. This generation is motivated by what has transpired in other African countries, where many of the liberation and ruling parties have been kicked out by voters in order to bring about social, economic and political change.
This generation is less concerned with historical legacy, and is more interested in leaders who are judged based on their economic performance rather than the longstanding reputation of their parties.
This group is half of Tanzania’s 43 million people, and in 2015 they will comprise 60 percent of the total eligible voters. With more than 120,000 students expected in both public and private universities, in the next five years there will be about 600,000 graduates who will be eligible voters.
 his group, plus a mass of uneducated but ambitious youths in search of employment, will be the strongest drivers of change in Tanzania in the next five years.
While the old guards remain stridently loyal to the party that liberated the country, the new liberal and ambitious generations have not lived through the so-called liberation struggle and are more concerned with the struggle for economic and social prosperity.
After the blundering battle for the Speaker chair this week, which saw Samuel Sitta and his rival Andrew Chenge both eliminated by the Central Committee, the public is waiting to see which type of cabinet President Kikwete will appoint. Many believe there will be minor changes, while insiders maintain that Kiwkete will form a smaller cabinet with major new faces, dropping the non performers.
It’s also expected that the party will make major reforms in its top leadership especially the current Secretary General, Yusuf Makamba, whose unplanned moves have caused grievances and sufferings within his party. Some insiders within the party who declined to be named told The Guardian on Sunday in Dodoma that Makamba has totally failed to lead the party as expected and will be rebuked.
Though Makamba wasn’t available for comment on the various allegations directed at him, it’s obvious that some party insiders are now gunning for his head, perhaps to make him a whipping boy around which the wounded and divided party can rally to heal itself.
SOURCE: GUARDIAN ON SUNDAY
 
A long article with full of facts. CCM leaders have a lot of useful and practical ideas to pick from this article. But as the article writter has pinpointed somewhere that if God wants changes, he will just provide environment for the changes to happen. This is exactly what we have seen for the last five years under kikwete and makamba's leadership particularly in the rulling party. Despite serious allegations of grand corruption which undermines considerably country'
s economy, ccm leaders have always maintained their 'wrong concept' that the corruption is committed by individual members and not the party. As if that is not enough, kikwete took a step further by compaigning for Basil Mramba and Andrew Chenge before voters. This again contributed significantly to the improvement of the what we term to be 'environment for the changes' that the eyes and brains of ccm leaders can't see, realize and perceive it.
 
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