Rule of law paramount in pursuit of development goals

The reason is that the presumed relationship between the three estates, namely legislative, executive and judiciary, is in crisis. There is an unhealthy insistence on the part of executive branch that only its viewpoint reach the people, that a contrary viewpoint cultivates dissension, and is thus tantamount to sedition.

With due respect that this line of reasoning makes plenty of sense, it is evident that the whole cast of institutions is made in such a manner as to make such expression not just possible but lawful and even encouraged.

If the notion of sedition to which police political desks are so fond of resorting these days was as valid as they wish to believe, its actual corollary is to abolish the multiparty system of state to go back to a one-party state. For in a multiparty state there is nothing like sedition; one can vote for other parties, not revolt.

Given the sort of evident political directive now guiding the police in handling opposition political parties and especially legislators from the key opposition party, CHADEMA, it is as if there is a different set of laws than what is used.

This comes from some clever legislation to bypass the constitution, where the law governing the police, the Police Force Act, has provisions which are close to acting in a state of emergency. It makes police officers the determinants of what can be expressed in public, which was the case in a one party state.

Let it be said that the police force knows the law as much of those in power, and they know that they are bending the law to diminish problems of mobilization in the face of organized opposition.

It is more or less like saying that democracy is a difficult mode of rule, as it hinders development activity when people are distracted from what they are being told by the government. It is to go back to one-party tendancy where no political actor was allowed to speak against any facet of government action or pronouncements.

It is entirely true that Tanzanians are used to the one party state, and that is why most people and especially elders in the ruling party and elsewhere, for instance retired presidents and prime ministers, have not dared to cry foul of arrests of parliamentarians, but instead let them hauled before law courts for sedition.

The matter has become a simple item for peer review criticism, whether Tanzania scores high marks in governance or not, an item of wrist slapping that those in authority scarcely bother about. But democracy is at stake.

Let us learn from the latest US experience where the courts of law have reminded the incoming President Donald Trump the limits of his powers in relation to altering the country’s way of life, and dignity of its institutions.

His order not to allow travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries was slapped a hold order by the courts, and an appeals court threw out a government appeal on the issue.

In Tanzania as well it is proper that those in charge of courts in the first place, even the police, exercise prerogatives in the direction of affirming the rule of law. We must exercise our consciences, not just obey.