BY EDITOR
1st November 2015.
He will take office in exceptionally difficult conditions, despite an outward calm, especially in the functional capital, Dar es Salaam, and genuine celebrations in various parts of the country.
The president-elect faces daunting tasks, not least of which is to bring the constitutional organs of the United Republic to a functioning state.
For instance, Dr Magufuli is likely to take office when there is no constitutionally okayed president in Zanzibar but a virtual caretaker government of the ruling party incumbent, Dr Ali Mohamed Shein, who is claimed by CUF to have lost the Isles presidential poll.
That way Dr Shein can’t be said to be running a government in the Isles, as the Government of National Unity wouldn’t be functioning, not with the disputed poll results. Nor can he properly form a CCM-based government while he hasn’t been announced as the winner.
Nor will Dr Magufuli have a safe seat of the Union presidency upon which he may seek to extend a hand to resolve the Isles crisis, as his own presidential polls win is now a subject of legal battles in human rights and good governance tribunals around the world.
Opposition candidate Edward Lowassa has alleged at a press conference that he actually won by 62 per cent, but the figures were tampered with by the National Electoral Commission. Yet, with Ukawa candidates having signed on the dotted line of the result slips of parliamentary polls, it won’t really make much difference.
However, this smouldering rather than dormant volcano could be restored to an active one if the president-elect, once in office, allows the Isles situation to degenerate into chaos.
This might however start before he even takes office, as the 48-hour or so altimatum issued by CUF candidate, Maalim Seif Shariff Hamad, for the poll results to be announced, will have passed by the time Dr Magufuli will be gearing himself for taking his oath of office.
It will however still be early enough, and plenty will depend on the sort of initiatives and sentiment he will adopt.
What is worse is that the Isles commission is seeking to hold fresh polls in such manner that will ensure a CCM victory, as nothing was wrong with the poll except that CCM failed to gain the majority it needs to keep the Union set-up intact.
Still the changes to the Union constitution enacted in 1994 envisage a situation where different parties are in office in the two parts of the Union, in which case electing Maalim Seif ought to pose no problems. Some are worried about his Union intentions, and refuse to solve it by referendum.
Strictly speaking, there is no agenda that is above validating poll results, as that implies upholding purposes of some statecraft master stroke 50 years ago into something above the will of the people.
For one thing, even an opposition president in Zanzibar shall need the Union, to keep at bay the marauding forces that could be unleashed upon a fledgling isolated regime.
In addition, Seif is a former chief minister of that same Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar, and the rest is an overgrown propaganda effort to win dissident voices.
Obviously, he would make some changes, even far-reaching ones, but everything is supposed to be done constitutionally, and the first step is to recognize matters, dampen the ferment on the Mainland, and thus enable proper reconvening of Parliament.
We must follow the voice of reason, not the voices of ex-presidents.
SOURCE: GUARDIAN ON SUNDAY
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