WHY I AM RUNNING FOR THE PRESIDENCY OF THE UNITED REPUBLIC OF TANZANIA
On October 25th the citizens of Tanzania will go to the polls to elect leaders and representatives to serve in various offices in our constitutional system. As dictated by the Constitution of the United Republic of Tanzania and its electoral laws, the only people with the right to stand as candidates for election to these constitutional offices are members sponsored by fully registered political parties.
My political party CHADEMA has expressed its wish to participate in the elections and has announced the procedures for which the party will nominate candidates. In compliance with the relevant party guidelines, I am now honoured to announce that I have formally submitted my intention to run for the position of the President of the United Republic of Tanzania during this year’s general elections on a CHADEMA platform.
Let me explain what has driven me to present myself for nomination as the candidate of our party in the presidential contest.
A NATION AT THE CROSS-ROADS
For the last five years Tanzania has been under the iron fist of President John Pombe Magufuli and his Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party. In that time Magufuli has brought the country to the brink of economic, political and diplomatic disaster.
Ever since Tanzania dropped the state interventionist policies of the mid-1980s, our national economy has been deeply integrated into the global economic and financial systems. Our government no longer owns or runs economic or business ventures. Instead, it is the private sector that has been the main driver of economic growth and investment in the various sectors of our economy. This has been the case since President Ali Hassan Mwinyi took office in 1985. And it was the case until the advent of President Magufuli’s administration in November 2015.
ECONOMY IN NEAR COLLAPSE
President Magufuli disregarded this. He has run the economy through State House orders and edicts issued at political. Using the armed forces, the intelligence services and the Tanzania Revenue Authority, the President has launched a vicious war on the private sector, seizing accounts and other assets of both foreign and local businesses. Even peasant farmers have not been spared. Last year the security forces went on a rampage to seize and confiscate tens of thousands of tons of cashew crops from peasant farmers in the southern regions of Tanzania.
To procure the funds to finance his pet infrastructure projects, President Magufuli’s administration has imposed extortionist taxes on businesspeople, from the smallest proprietor to the largest magnate, irrespective of the state of their businesses or their earnings. These extortionate taxes have been collected with shocking brutality. Business owners have been blackmailed into paying exorbitant sums of money as back taxes at pain of being arrested and imprisoned under the country’s draconian economic crimes laws.
Those unable to pay up or who resist this mafia-style shakedown have faced arrest and imprisonment without bail in the country’s notorious maximum security prisons; or they have had their assets seized and forfeited to the government. Some, like the former chairman of the Tanzania Private Sector Foundation (TPSF) have died in prison.
The outcome of this economic warfare on the private sector is clear to all. The economy is on life-support; many businesspeople and investors have fled Tanzania with their capital, shifting their operations, jobs and tax revenues to safer havens in neighbouring countries. Inevitably, government takings from taxes have plummeted; and unemployment and consequent impoverishment, particularly amongst the youth, has skyrocketed.
Today the economic plight of our people is far worse than at any time since before President Magufuli assumed office in 2015. This year’s General Election will decide whether President Magufuli gets another five years to continue his destruction of our national economy and impoverishment of our people, or whether we will get a fresh beginning by removing him and his party from office.
A NATION OF WIDOWS, ORPHANS AND INVALIDS
In the five years of his administration, President Magufuli has undermined the constitutional, political and administrative order of our country. Since 1984, our country has had a Bill of Rights enshrined in our Constitution setting out the fundamental rights and freedoms and responsibilities of our people. In those five years, President Magufuli and his security forces have torn to shreds the entire system of legal and constitutional protections of human rights and the rule of law.
Disappearances, abductions and torture of government critics and journalists. Extra-judicial killings of the opponents of the government and the ruling part. The extensive use of paramilitary security forces against the civilian population exercising their democratic rights. These have become the norm. Impunity has reigned supreme in Tanzania ya Magufuli. This year’s General Elections will determine whether the people of Tanzania are prepared to tolerate five more years of this government-orchestrated oppression, humiliation and violence to their persons or property, or whether they will be ready to throw off the intolerable yoke of this tyranny.
Tanzania has become a land of people crippled - physically and psychologically - by the violence of the Magufuli government. That I make this announcement from the loneliness of a European exile, not in the land of my birth surrounded by family, friends and colleagues, bears witness to the horrors that have visited our country these past five years. This General Election will decide whether the widows, orphans and those physically or emotionally disabled by this regime will get a comforter-in-chief to wipe away their tears, provide solace to the victims and bind the nation’s deep wounds; or whether their tormentor-in-chief will get another five years to cause more pain and create more victims.
A TYRANNICAL RULE
Since Tanzania became a multiparty democracy in 1992, the democratic system has taken root and prospered, as evidenced by the returns in the various multiparty elections conducted during this period. Nevertheless, since assuming office, President Magufuli has declared open war against multiparty democracy in Tanzania. The President himself declared on national television, on the 39th anniversary of his party CCM in February of 2016, that he would see to it that there are no opposition parties by the year 2020, i.e. by this election year.
We have all borne witness to the ruthless implementation of the President’s pledge to turn back the clock of history by bludgeoning the country back to the dark days of single party rule. President Magufuli’s security forces and intelligence services have waged an unrelenting struggle against leaders, activists and members of the opposition parties, particularly of CHADEMA and of ACT-Wazalendo in Zanzibar. As a result of this vicious war on the legitimate opposition, the fate of multiparty democracy in Tanzania hangs in the balance. This year’s General Election will decide whether President Magufuli will bring his dream of a single party Tanzania to fruition, or whether multiparty democracy shall endure and prosper in our country.
A STRONG BUNGE AND INDEPENDENT JUDICIARY
Hand in hand with the assault on multiparty democracy, President Magufuli has also prosecuted a brutal, but often insidious, war on the principle of separation of powers between the different arms of the government by systematically undermining and weakening the power, authority and prestige of the National Assembly and the Judiciary. The history of our country’s Parliament from independence to the early 1990s is not a particularly proud one. With the possible exception of the first few years after Independence, the Parliament of that period became what an eminent constitutional scholar has described as “an empty shell with little power and even less a forum for public debate, scrutiny and criticism.” It was deaf mute and blind to the rights and interests of the people of Tanzania it ostensibly represented.
Our Parliament began to regain its voice and power following the reintroduction of the multiparty system in 1992 and, especially, after the first multiparty general elections in 1995. It has grown ever since. It is to the great credit of the former presidents of a multiparty Tanzania, especially President Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete, that under their watch our Parliament came of age and became a truly representative organ of the people with matching power, authority and prestige in the eyes of the people of Tanzania.
It is also to the great credit of the Speakers of the Parliament of the time, the late Samuel John Sitta and Mama Anna Semamba Makinda, that under their steady leadership, our Bunge regained the voice to speak out against the iniquities of those in power; the ears to hear the desperate cries of the oppressed; the eyes to see the ugly face of impunity and the teeth to bite those who abused their public trust.
In Tanzania ya Magufuli, our Parliament, under the compromised leadership of Speaker Job Yustino Ndugai, has been subverted and made subservient to the needs of tyranny. Again, the parallels with the Bunge of the era of party supremacy between 1965 and 1985 are striking. The October 2020 General Elections will determine whether we return to the era of an assertive and truly independent Parliament or whether we will have five more years of Parliament as an appendage of the government it is meant to oversee.
President Magufuli has also attacked the independence and impartiality of our Judiciary in a manner unprecedented in our entire history. He has publicly attacked, excoriated and humiliated the judges and justices of our superior courts. He has unceremoniously and unconstitutionally removed others from their tenured offices. He has interfered with their independence, directing them on how to judge criminal cases involving the victims of his misguided economic warfare, and promising monetary rewards and promotions to judges and magistrates who do his bidding.
Predictably, the outcome of these practices has been a weakened and subservient Judiciary at the beck and call of the Imperial President. Rather than a bulwark ‘to protect the weak against the oppression or tyranny of the strong and the ruthless’, as one of our greatest chief justices said, our Judiciary has become an instrument for the oppression of the weak by this ruthless tyranny. Rather than ensure that democracy in our country grows and our people enjoy the personal freedoms guaranteed to them by the Constitution, as Chief Justice Samatta implored, our courts have become the sharpest edge of the dagger pointed at the heart of our democracy and our fundamental rights and freedoms. These General Elections must decide whether we will continue to have a compromised Judiciary that is used as an instrument of terror and oppression, or whether we shall have a Judiciary that is truly independent, impartial and worthy of a multiparty democracy and a free people.
‘A SKUNK OF THE WORLD’
From the earliest years of our Independence, Tanzania has had a high standing in international diplomacy. For nearly quarter century of his leadership, our Founding Father Mwalimu Julius Nyerere put Tanzania firmly on the global map. Under his principled leadership, we made steady friends and development partners on both sides of the Cold War. We built solidarity and close relations with our East African neighbours; we were on the frontline of the liberation struggles to end colonialism and racism in Southern Africa, and became the standard bearers of the solidarity of the peoples and nations of Africa and the Third World.
Our country and its leaders enjoyed the respect of the peoples and governments of the world. We reaped the immense economic, social, political and diplomatic benefits that always flow from being good citizens of the world. That one of the daughters of the United Republic became the Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations; and one of its sons the Secretary General of the African Union, bears witness to our country’s high standing in international diplomacy of years past.
Since coming to office in 2015, President Magufuli has damaged our standing in the world and undermined our international diplomacy. He has antagonized our friends and development partners. He has estranged us from our closest neighbours in the East African Community. He has driven a wedge between us and our historic comrades-in-arms of the Southern African Development Community, whose freedom and independence we paid for with our blood and treasure.
He has cast doubt on our legitimate place in the hallowed pantheon of the founders of the African Union, and its forerunner the Organisation of African Unity. He has put us at odds with international organizations such as the United Nations; and has cost our country our longstanding friends from the European Union, Scandinavia, North America and across the world.
Magufuli has transformed Tanzania from a beacon of hope and anchor of stability in a troubled region to an international pariah. Our country and its leaders have now become the subject of regular condemnation in the councils of the world and in the international press for its deplorable human rights record and malpractice in a variety of areas, ranging from the education of female children to the President’s mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
That Tanzania should be ‘locked out’ by our partners and neighbours in the East African Community; that the leaders of the Southern African Development Community should proceed with their extraordinary summit without President Magufuli, who is the incumbent Chairman of SADC, is testimony to the diplomatic depths we have fallen to under his watch. Our country has become what I said in Nairobi, Kenya, on 5 January 2018, shortly before I was transferred to Belgium for further treatment: ‘a skunk of the world.’
Rather than step back from the brink of international isolation, President Magufuli and his government has defiantly pressed on, insulting our long-term friends and development partners with such unedifying epithets as ‘imperialists’, and expelling or harassing their diplomatic representatives in Tanzania. This year’s General Election will answer the question whether our country can survive alone in the vast sea of international relations by continuing to ignore the global norms of international good behaviour, or whether we will mend our ways and return to the international fold as responsible members of the international community.
THE NEW CONSTITUTION
Fellow citizens,
In 1978 Mwalimu Nyerere, our first President, stated, in an interview with BBC, that he had sufficient powers, under the Constitution and the laws of Tanzania, to be a dictator. The Constitution that the Father of the Nation referred to in that interview, is the current Constitution of the United Republic of Tanzania, enacted in 1977 during the heyday of single party supremacy and its attendant authoritarianism. The draconian laws he spoke of are still in our statute books, and many more have been added to the vast arsenal of the legal and extra-legal despotism that currently weighs down on our collective neck as a nation.
Five years of iron-fisted rule by President Magufuli has taught us an unforgettable lesson on the importance and the urgent necessity for a new democratic constitutional and legal order founded on justice, equality and humanity. This year’s General Elections is a crucial test of whether we have learnt this great lesson of irresponsible rule, are no longer prepared to live under a Constitution and laws that make dictators of our elected leaders, and therefore will return to the drawing boards for a new constitutional dispensation sabotaged and discontinued by the CCM government in 2014; or whether we will continue to tolerate, excuse or appease the dictatorial rulers who have found refuge under the current Constitution and the laws.
Fellow countrymen and women,
These are some of the key issues and reasons that have always animated and informed my commitment to public service. They are the issues that drove me to contest the first multiparty elections in 1995 as a twenty-seven year old graduate student. They are the issues that spurred me to fight for the rural communities brutalized by the advent of the corporate mining industry in the goldfields of North-West Tanzania in the late 1990s and the 2000s. They inspired my parliamentary work for seven years before it was cut short in a hail of machinegun fire that fateful September day in 2017. And as I begin this perilous but exciting new journey to confront President Magufuli and his record in the October showdown, these are the issues and reasons that will keep me going.
I know and understand that some of you have fears about my legal qualifications to stand as a presidential candidate in the forthcoming General Elections, owing to Speaker Ndugai’s decision to strip me of my parliamentary seat in June of last year, on the ground of alleged violation of our country’s Public Leadership Ethics Code. I intend to address this issue more fully and thoroughly in next few days. Suffice it to say that I have never, in my entire career as a public servant, been charged with, prosecuted or convicted for any infraction, however small, of the Public Leadership Ethics Code; or for any other crime or offence that will stand me disqualified for any elective office in the United Republic.
Furthermore, under our constitutional system and in terms of the Public Leadership Ethics Code, it is the Public Leadership Ethics Tribunal that has the sole mandate to prosecute or punish public leaders who do not meet the strict edicts of that law. Speaker Ndugai is the Speaker of the National Assembly of the United Republic. His eminent position notwithstanding, he is not the Ethics Tribunal or a member thereof. Therefore, his decision regarding my status as a member of the National Assembly has no bearing whatsoever on my fitness to stand in the election for the President of the United Republic.
So, I ask you all to join me in this challenging but exciting journey in the weeks and months ahead. Let us all join hands to bind the wounds of our nation; to take care of the widow and the orphan and the many maimed of these five years; to wipe the tears and cast away the fears of these terrible years; to free the captives of this regime, bring justice and prosperity for all and set our nation on the road to greatness again.
I thank you for your patience and may God bless you all.
Tundu A.M. Lissu (MB)
Tienen, Ubelgiji
31 Mei 2020
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