Efforts by the newly inaugurated fifth phase government to make a sort of impact on the diplomatic scene is at a distinctly tone, where the voice is more or less inaudible.
There is little or nothing that the Union government has said concerning the current impasse on the Zanzibar presidential election, while authorities in Zanzibar proceed with a polls repeat scheme that is likely to throw the Isles into chaos.
It is not quite different from late intervention efforts in relation to Burundi, where the tone was rather muted.
Before embarking on either conflict resolution effort, the Union authorities first showed or underlined keen alliance with the powers in place, whose legitimacy is hotly contested by all shades of international opinion, save in their own capitals.
In Burundi the supposed legal precept permitting a third term bid by President Pierre Nkurunziza saw most of the constitutional court being replaced or axed, and a youthful law officer still in his 20s is reported to have read out the disputed verdict. The loyal court of the president, as it were.
In like manner the commission that was tasked with overseeing elections and announcing results in Zanzibar is capable only of announcing the right verdict, that is, in the opinion of the Isles State House, backed by the Zanzibar Revolutionary Council.
The latter is a shadowy body whose statutory existence is by any stretch of imagination incompatible with democracy, in which case the Union authorities are trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.
There isn’t an iota of doubt that polls repeat means getting the right result…
All this train of events means that the government is not yet in a position to seek conflict resolution but conflict management, in the sense that it plays ball with the various sides on the basis of existing institutional limits, with all their prejudices.
Neither in the Burundi nor in the Isles context is the government of President John Magufuli seemingly capable of looking at issues starkly and frankly, in which case being able to assert or ascertain the democratic kernel, the proper solution. It is a matter of dousing contentions.
Since the president has been working round the clock to sort out sector assignments and policy outlooks before appointing the relevant ministers, it would be interesting to find out if this policy format was factually set out with veteran conflict management field expert, Ambassador Dr Augustine Mahiga.
It would be one thing for him to just being assigned to the Burundi task in that manner or being spokesman on the Isles contention to the outside world. He has so far said nothing on the Isles but his Burundi remarks fit in.
If there is no clear policy agreement between the minister and the president, and thus policy is something that is decided in a breakfast meeting, it would follow that the minister wasn’t picked on policy merit but skills.
Those before him had experience in the government or like Dr Mahiga in state security services, but had little diplomatic track record or problem solving experience. Ambassador Dr Mahiga combines extensive experience in gathering intelligence and analyzing it, and in peace broking, evading wars.
It is however evident that the government is consistent with its policy stance in the two situations, in the sense that it isn’t championing democracy either in Burundi or in the Isles.
That too amounts to a philosophy of conflict resolution which has been noticeable in the government for year, that is, a conservative pro-regime outlook which also passes for a Pan-African way of looking at things, where Africans solve their own problems.
In instances where Pan-African concerns are uppermost, the opposite is European values…
Key in the latter outlook is an excessive concern with democracy, and that is the new tone within the East African Community, where regime change via the ballot box was hotly resisted in Kenya early 2008 after cliff hanging polls were ‘forced’ to a favourable result for authorities in place.
Four years later the big warlords formed a united front and handed candid defeat to the more democratic voices ranged against those accused of acts of complicity in prolonged disturbances of early 2008. It was virtually to purchase peace.
Except Kenya for the moment, and our neighbours to the south like Malawi and Zambia who have had distinctive experience with a new parliamentary majority and ruling party change, the rest of East Africa and well beyond as it were, have little experience of ‘regime change.’
Several of them like South Africa have a firmly established ethos of a one party state de facto, in the sense that the only organization capable of dreaming of taking over reins of office is the African National Congress. It is slippery a bit elsewhere.
Just what is the proper diplomatic strategy of the new Foreign Minister is a bit perplexing as he does not seem to be pursuing any big design, for instance democratic elections.
His sentiments about Burundi left not a few regional observers gasping for breath, basically echoing the position of the Bujumbura authorities that an African peace keeping force would be an invasion force.
That would definitely have been said by the genocidal group in Rwanda in the second quarter 1994, as France cordoned off the zone, the killing fields.
Disputes have been raging among some academic and kindred observers as to whether Burundi is into some sort of Rwanda type mass killings program, where the answer is decidedly no, as the conflict isn’t tribal and meant to finish off a specific ethnic group.
On the contrary there is political cleansing taking place, where dozens of people are being found murdered, a scenario less similar to that of Rwanda and more typical of what is known as counter insurgency.
The strategy is to drain ponds, burn off sanctuaries, etc.
For reasons of psychological distance of most Tanzanian media watchers from realities of the Burundi situation, this approach, constituting in a dialogue strategy with President Nkurunziza without a semblance of a counterbalancing force, is more or less inapplicable for Zanzibar.
It is evident that the sort of killings taking place in Burundi could not have been conducted in the Isles and leave the Union authorities calm and unruffled as our amiable minister cut that sort of figure in Bujumbura.
Was that realism, or insensitivity? In tandem with a rule of relative levels of pain, what is being ignored in Burundi isn’t just precepts of democracy but gross violations of human rights, meanwhile as that level of pain would be too intense for Zanzibar, at least not capable of being the political line of current authorities, while one fears for the worst in Zanzibar. It is indulgence for atrocity.
It is not quite different from late intervention efforts in relation to Burundi, where the tone was rather muted.
Before embarking on either conflict resolution effort, the Union authorities first showed or underlined keen alliance with the powers in place, whose legitimacy is hotly contested by all shades of international opinion, save in their own capitals.
In Burundi the supposed legal precept permitting a third term bid by President Pierre Nkurunziza saw most of the constitutional court being replaced or axed, and a youthful law officer still in his 20s is reported to have read out the disputed verdict. The loyal court of the president, as it were.
In like manner the commission that was tasked with overseeing elections and announcing results in Zanzibar is capable only of announcing the right verdict, that is, in the opinion of the Isles State House, backed by the Zanzibar Revolutionary Council.
The latter is a shadowy body whose statutory existence is by any stretch of imagination incompatible with democracy, in which case the Union authorities are trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.
There isn’t an iota of doubt that polls repeat means getting the right result…
All this train of events means that the government is not yet in a position to seek conflict resolution but conflict management, in the sense that it plays ball with the various sides on the basis of existing institutional limits, with all their prejudices.
Neither in the Burundi nor in the Isles context is the government of President John Magufuli seemingly capable of looking at issues starkly and frankly, in which case being able to assert or ascertain the democratic kernel, the proper solution. It is a matter of dousing contentions.
Since the president has been working round the clock to sort out sector assignments and policy outlooks before appointing the relevant ministers, it would be interesting to find out if this policy format was factually set out with veteran conflict management field expert, Ambassador Dr Augustine Mahiga.
It would be one thing for him to just being assigned to the Burundi task in that manner or being spokesman on the Isles contention to the outside world. He has so far said nothing on the Isles but his Burundi remarks fit in.
If there is no clear policy agreement between the minister and the president, and thus policy is something that is decided in a breakfast meeting, it would follow that the minister wasn’t picked on policy merit but skills.
Those before him had experience in the government or like Dr Mahiga in state security services, but had little diplomatic track record or problem solving experience. Ambassador Dr Mahiga combines extensive experience in gathering intelligence and analyzing it, and in peace broking, evading wars.
It is however evident that the government is consistent with its policy stance in the two situations, in the sense that it isn’t championing democracy either in Burundi or in the Isles.
That too amounts to a philosophy of conflict resolution which has been noticeable in the government for year, that is, a conservative pro-regime outlook which also passes for a Pan-African way of looking at things, where Africans solve their own problems.
In instances where Pan-African concerns are uppermost, the opposite is European values…
Key in the latter outlook is an excessive concern with democracy, and that is the new tone within the East African Community, where regime change via the ballot box was hotly resisted in Kenya early 2008 after cliff hanging polls were ‘forced’ to a favourable result for authorities in place.
Four years later the big warlords formed a united front and handed candid defeat to the more democratic voices ranged against those accused of acts of complicity in prolonged disturbances of early 2008. It was virtually to purchase peace.
Except Kenya for the moment, and our neighbours to the south like Malawi and Zambia who have had distinctive experience with a new parliamentary majority and ruling party change, the rest of East Africa and well beyond as it were, have little experience of ‘regime change.’
Several of them like South Africa have a firmly established ethos of a one party state de facto, in the sense that the only organization capable of dreaming of taking over reins of office is the African National Congress. It is slippery a bit elsewhere.
Just what is the proper diplomatic strategy of the new Foreign Minister is a bit perplexing as he does not seem to be pursuing any big design, for instance democratic elections.
His sentiments about Burundi left not a few regional observers gasping for breath, basically echoing the position of the Bujumbura authorities that an African peace keeping force would be an invasion force.
That would definitely have been said by the genocidal group in Rwanda in the second quarter 1994, as France cordoned off the zone, the killing fields.
Disputes have been raging among some academic and kindred observers as to whether Burundi is into some sort of Rwanda type mass killings program, where the answer is decidedly no, as the conflict isn’t tribal and meant to finish off a specific ethnic group.
On the contrary there is political cleansing taking place, where dozens of people are being found murdered, a scenario less similar to that of Rwanda and more typical of what is known as counter insurgency.
The strategy is to drain ponds, burn off sanctuaries, etc.
For reasons of psychological distance of most Tanzanian media watchers from realities of the Burundi situation, this approach, constituting in a dialogue strategy with President Nkurunziza without a semblance of a counterbalancing force, is more or less inapplicable for Zanzibar.
It is evident that the sort of killings taking place in Burundi could not have been conducted in the Isles and leave the Union authorities calm and unruffled as our amiable minister cut that sort of figure in Bujumbura.
Was that realism, or insensitivity? In tandem with a rule of relative levels of pain, what is being ignored in Burundi isn’t just precepts of democracy but gross violations of human rights, meanwhile as that level of pain would be too intense for Zanzibar, at least not capable of being the political line of current authorities, while one fears for the worst in Zanzibar. It is indulgence for atrocity.
SOURCE: GUARDIAN ON SUNDAY
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