The leading protagonist is the ruling party, Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM) which is predictably enthusiastic about a rerun, especially in a situation where the main opposition party in Zanzibar, the Civic United Front (CUF) is absent from the poll.
They will then claim a landslide victory and enshrine a mandate to rule for five years, looking quite nice and a brilliant way of doing things.
In his last year as the chairman of the ruling party as per recent central committee decision, retired president Jakaya Kikwete did shed some crocodile tears lately when he remarked that CCM accepted a polls rerun with a heavy heart. This move had denied CCM the start of their usual victory celebrations but had only postponed those celebrations, the current ruling party supremo noted, implying that they were more or less ready to announce a false victory. Thus common sense forced CCM to rerun the polls.
To underline the social intensity of the matter and the rifts and divides that are now taking society apart on the issue, a Dar es Salaam regional sheikh for the part of the Muslim community affiliated with the ruling party, namely the Muslim Council of Tanzania (BAKWATA) urged Isles voters to turn out, and opposition to rethink its boycott. He even said he had received a letter from the leader of the still imprisoned Isles reawakening movement, informally known as Uamsho, that he supports a rerun of polls. That affirmation has been challenged by sheikhs who are much closer to the jailed Isles’militants.
The former Union presidential candidate on the opposition ticket, Edward Lowassa has made painstaking remarks on dangers closing in on the country in case the rerun polls are conducted.
He pointed out that there are long-term cultural links between Zanzibar and the Middle East, apart from other places in ferment like the long Somali plus Kenyan coastline.
The zone is brimming with suicide bomb potential carriers, or simply bomb posers the way they routinely do on the Kenyan restive north east long border with Somalia.
The reason for this worry is that the polls rerun constitutes a flagrant refusal to recognise formal results registered in the well organised October 25 polls.
This is the core source of the much-vaunted January 12, 1964 events that independence polls were rigged and the Isles African majority failed to take the reins of power.
They hence proceeded to do so by force of arms, and since then mark January 12 as national day, denying the December 13 protocol, and singularly incapable of a reversal by ballot boxes.
That is definitely the wisdom in the Isles corridors of power and among their Union government allies, such that it is being declared by people who should know better, that the Union president is powerless in the Isles situation.
That assertion would have us believe that the Union president provides the police and army corps stationed in Zanzibar but simply cannot interfere in the political process, which obviously means he is incapable of withdrawing them either despite his being commander in chief of the armed forces.
Those assertions manifest a clear effort to impute paralysis on the part of Union institutions which doesn’t exist, and fails to take heed of instances of precaution earlier.
The 2010 settlement of the-then Zanzibar political impasse arose from intervention by Union president Jakaya Kikwete when prospects of his appearance at The Hague were laid out to him in his foreign trips. Mid-2009 voter registration had ignored opposition sympathisers, turned down for whatever excuse, so as not to register.
On account of the fact that neither JK nor those who advised him outside the country, by laying bare the threat to appear before chambers of the global watchdog, the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague opted to take the credit for the change to a government of national unity, this matter is now being taken in a cavalier fashion.
Yet these Mid-Eastern and coastal terror links network potential are real and indubitable, and once it is clear that the polls process has been shut out, methods of despair know no limits.
President John Magufuli would do with a simple English adage: A stitch in time saves nine! Terrorists will not only hit Bwawani but also in Dar es Salaam heartland of power.
Some top level state officials are reported to have pointlessly asked opposition chief Edward Lowassa for information on Al Qaeda plans.
The question is that despair invited terrorism, but rulers here are satisfied that Tanzania is a country of peace, and are under the impression that things in the Isles will remain the same, come what may.
That looks like the way someone can be boosted in confidence by reading a star column, visiting a soothsayer or after listening to exhilarating prayers. The sense of reality bolts and instead there is a powerful impression on what is possible on the basis of figures of reality rather than reality itself. Can a country be naturally an island of peace?
While MPs are casting doubt on the viability of the planned development outlook for the next year, and the five year scenario is more difficult when we are told that we can’t afford a revamping of the central railway line as we wish, sprinkling terrorism to this bill isn’t advisable. Individuals like Foreign Minister Augustine Mahiga are far too experimented not to see a link between electoral despair and terror, whether it is in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Algeria or at the moment, Burundi. Why should Tanzania have to travel along that road?
When for instance ex-running mate to Lowassa, Duni Haji Duni speaks of no one being able to rule Zanzibar if the crisis is allowed to persist and talks on a government of national unity fail, what assurances are there to the contrary? Is police assurance credible, when all they can is to shower crowds with soap water in case they go for street demonstration?
But terrorists demonstrate with indiscriminate guns and bombs.
SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN
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