{UAH} Pojim/WBK: Trying to be too clever by half, CCM has divided the country into two parts - Comment - www.theeastafrican.co.ke
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Trying to be too clever by half, CCM has divided the country into two parts - Comment
This Wednesday past, President Jakaya Kikwete was handed a proposed constitution drafted by the Constituent Assembly (CA) under the chairmanship of Samuel Sitta.
There was no doubt that the president was pleased with his handiwork and that most of the people at the presentation ceremony joined in the elation.
After months of wrangling and dissension, in which major opposition parties boycotted the CA and some attempted, in vain, to thwart the work of the Assembly, finally the proposed constitution was being presented to the head of state with pomp and circumstance.
This was a certain victory for the ruling CCM, whose ultra-conservative old guard had opposed the very idea of writing a new constitution.
When their chairman, President Kikwete, declared that he was setting in motion a process to write a new constitution, his party was momentarily taken aback, but soon regrouped and read him the riot act.
There would be no significant constitutional rearrangement in the "new constitution' and the only things they would countenance would be a tweak here and a tweak there.
Kikwete buckled and abandoned his earlier commitment to support the commission he had himself appointed to do the preliminary opinion gathering work on which a new constitution would be predicated.
The commission, chaired by reputable veteran lawyer Joseph Warioba, was disbanded unceremoniously, its members treated as if they had been unwanted all along, and their vehicles reclaimed in a morning; the commission's website, with the draft constitution, appendices and matrices was taken off air, as if to make sure no one could access its work and rationale.
When the CA convened it became clear that it meant to negate all the major tenets of the Warioba Daft. A superficial view held that the main contentious issue was the three-tier system proposed for the Union between Tanganyika and Zanzibar, but there was much more than that.
A more objectionable feature of the Warioba proposals as far as the ruling party was concerned was the very notion of curtailing the powers of the executive by limiting the president's powers to appoint individuals to certain positions.
In a conservative setting such as exists in Tanzania, that kind of erosion of presidential powers removes one huge source of patronage by which the ruling party survives.
Indeed, without that kind of latitude to appoint incompetents and thieves to lucrative positions, the rulers would find themselves seriously constrained. As a Dar es Salaam university don put it, "Without that corruptive power to appoint people without restriction, the system would not last."
The CA proposals also make it virtually impossible for independent candidates to stand for election, notwithstanding that a decision in their favour was established by a court of law a long time ago. (Incidentally, it was Sitta, as legal affairs minister, who steered legislation to bypass the court's ruling).
In short, we are where Kikwete had warned us we would be, when he said that in case of irresolvable disagreement we would remain with the current constitution of 1977. Plus the tweaking, courtesy of Sitta.
There were self-congratulatory speeches, song-and-dance, and jibes and broadsides against those who had dared to derail the process.
But despite all the ululations, there is no disguising the fact that by trying to be too clever by half, CCM has managed to divide the country into two, maybe three parts:
There are those who will continue to hanker after a new constitution where people's power over their rulers is recognised, and where executive power is significantly restricted.
There are those who will resist this because it takes away the patronage that feeds them. Then there are those who will welcome the current state of limbo since to them confusion is a useful medium.
A few weeks ago, the opposition had met with the president to find a solution to the impasse. At the end of their meeting, the country was told that the two sides had reached some agreement. Try as I might, I did not quite get the gist of that accord.
Now I think I understand that there was nothing to understand, except that it has been very, very expensive.
Jenerali Ulimwengu is chairman of the board of the Raia Mwema newspaper and an advocate of the High Court in Dar es Salaam. E-mail: ulimwengu@jenerali.com
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