As is well known, the move followed what the US government saw as Tanzania government’s reluctance to ‘appropriately address’ the Zanzibar political crisis and the passing into law of what has come to be referred to as the Anti-Cyber Crime Act.
The US government’s decision was made early this week after the Union government ‘allowed’ what the latter refers to as an independent electoral commission, ZEC, to go ahead and conduct a re-run of the Zanzibar election following the annulment of the Zanzibar election results by the ZEC Chairman, Salum Jecha Salum, late last year allegedly following electoral irregularities.
What finally angered the US government and other Western countries and organizations that are very likely to follow suit, was firstly, the failure by the ZEC to publicly point out instances of electoral irregularities.
It’s important to bear in mind that the West was mostly represented by the European Union observers during the 2015 General Election in Zanzibar.
It would be recalled that until almost the end of the election in the isles, all election observers, including those from the EU, were agreed that there had not been any palpable case of electoral irregularity until Jecha came up with the annulment of Zanzibar election results.
Thus when ZEC, through Jecha, later announced the date for the re-run of the Zanzibar election, it was the hope of the US government and the rest of the Western camp that the Union government would intervene and allow the announcement of the election results.
Therefore the cancellation of the MCC funding was long expected, especially when the re-run of the Zanzibar election was allowed to take full course.
Opinion over the US government’s decision have however, been divided with others calling all kinds of unprintable names and others siding with the move.
However, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, East African Cooperation and international affairs, Dr Augustine Mahiga, desribed the cancellation of the MCC funding as the end result of foreign dependency.
He said it was a lesson to the country that as long as it continued to depend heavily on foreign financial aid, time would come when its sovereignty may be compromised.
Although the government has already noted its preparedness to fill in the gap left out by the absence of the MCC’s funding.
Many political observers say such pronouncements could end up being the proverbial case of easier said than done.
In a nutshell, they say, the government may not have both the ability and the people who could make good the yawning financial gap.
But even if the government had both the requisite ability and the people to go the full hog and therefore fill in the financial gap left out by the MCC and others from the West.
But can Tanzania afford to do whatever it wants, hence live in isolation in the name of protecting its sovereignty?
Immediately after the word was out on the MCC, two important announcements were made on the isles election and the newly elected isles government by the Chinese government and the main opposition in parliament in Dodoma.
A Chinese diplomat in accompaniment with a Tanzanian cabinet minister said his government was quite satisfied with the way the isles election was conducted.
However, a spokesman for the main opposition in the Tanzanian parliament said the opposition would not cooperate with the newly elected isles government.
The issuance of two, foregong statements show the emergency of dichotomy on what transpired in Zanzibar a few days ago between two camps, internationally, led on one hand by the US and on the other by the Chinese government.
Located in the home turf, was the opposition which as noted, is now ranged against the powers that be in the isles, going by their non-cooperation statement.
It’s unfortunate we have not had this kind of political situation in the United Republic of Tanzania that has seen division both at local and international level in realtion to a political development that took place in either part of our two countries.
And this should now perhaps force Tanzanians to sit up and reflect on whether they are treading on the right path. Instead of continuing to do what we seem to have excelled in, talking, we now need to reflect by asking ourselves a few questions over what has led the US government and others in the West to take the kind of steps they have now taken against us.
Instead of seeing one side as ‘our friends’ and nother as ‘our enemies’ we need to go back to issues that have led to these developments of being ‘loved’ and being ‘hated.’
Of course, the present Zanzibar situation is a fait accompli and a new government is already in place.
But we need to bear in mind that we can no longer continue to bury our heads in the sand as we are part and parcel of the international community.
Having realised our important role in the community of nations, we need to start getting used to political tolerance.
We need to start realising that everything that has a beginning, ultimately has also an end.
And that much as the ruling party may have served us well both in the past and the present, a day would come, and that may not be long, it would lose power, just as it has happened with other independent political parties like kenya’s KANU, Zambia’s UNIP and Malawi’s Congress.
Therefore whatever love and attachment we may have with our ruling party, a time will come just as it happened a few months ago in Dar es Salaam, when CCM would be voted out, not in one town, city or region, but en masse, throughout the country.
And that being the case, we therefore need to start preparing ourselves, getting used to that eventuality so that when it finally comes to pass, we are not caught napping.
In short, for our party to continue to remain in power even for the next few years, we need to reorganize rather than throwing spanners in the works as we tried to do during the Dar es Salaam mayoral elections a few days ago.
Thanks to the quick and timely intervention of President John Pombe Magufuli.
The man was quick to see the folly of the kind of game CCM members were busy, trying to play, and told them to allow democracy to take its course.
But the timing of President Magufuli’s intervention was also interesting, coming as it did immediately after the end of re-run of the election in the isles.
And could, perhaps in a way, explain the turf wars that have been going on inside the ruling party both pro and against what the president has been doing since he was sworn in as the fifth president of the United Republic of Tanzania and the series of political developments that transpired in the isles after the Jecha saga.
For instance, nothing demonstrated the existence of lacuna within the ruling party than what transpired in Arusha a few weeks ago when President Magufuli invited President Ali Mohamed Shein on the podium to explain and calm EAC presidents on what was actually going on in Zanzibar and the latter elected to welcome the East African heads of states and government to Tanzania.
Thus the foregoing, ugly political developments and the election of President Shein should now put the two Tanzanian leaders in a position to start working, seriously, for the restoration of the MCC’s funding.
And one of the best ways of doing that is scraping off the so called anti-cyber crime.
Secondly, both leaders need to start taking a lead in getting the new constitution, not the draft passed by the fourth phase government which was nothing but a big joke, but rather the Warioba constitutional draft.
Only by working on the draft constitution that the people had participated in, coupled with the formation of a really, independent electoral commission would help in restoring confidence on the country whose present image has been badly bruised by poorly designed and choreographed political games.
• Attilio Tagalile is a journalist/author and media consultant based in Dar es Salaam and can be contacted through tagalileattilio@yahoo.co.uk
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