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| Columnists | | ‘Reform the Constitution: Leave our ex-presidents in peace please!’ | Makwaia wa KUHENGA
Daily News; Thursday,February 05, 2009 @21:15
| In the intervening period, political observers may have noted the rise of undercurrents building up both in the polity and within houses of worship which, in essence, point to an unhealthy immediate future for this country.
In the heels of voices from some houses of worship to the effect that one of the retired presidents was being ‘hounded’, there is a pastoral letter in place. This letter, according to a newspaper report front paged on Monday this week, warns of a ‘nation in imminent danger in the face of politics of vengeance’.
Reading the pastoral letter between the lines in the light of recent political pronouncements, an impression is steadily building up that there is a real danger of a decisive trend in this country along a religious divide. This follows remarks by some politicians to want to table a motion in parliament waiving constitutional safeguards prohibiting the prosecution of a retired president of this country.
Now, such undercurrents cannot be brushed aside or simply wished away. This country is not the United States or Britain - it is a fragile developing country - as fragile as any other country in Africa. In a fragile country, with young governance institutions, it is both critical and urgent for someone somewhere in either the leadership of the country or the civil society to assume leadership to offer options that may be helpful to avert imminent instability of the country.
It has been very interesting to follow the debate on whether or not to waive constitutional safeguards prohibiting the prosecution of a retired president. One of those joining the debate, a former cabinet minister in the ‘third phase’ administration wants the wife of that president facing allegations of abuse of office to be hauled to the court instead because ‘she is the one who amassed immense wealth’ and not her husband!
Another one, a church leader called a press conference at the MAELEZO auditorium to call upon the retired president who is alleged to have awarded himself a tender to exploit coal deposits in the country while in office to ‘repent and weep in public like Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda the other day when he was defending his strong statements on how to deal with the Albino killings sweeping across the country’! ‘…This retired president is doing well – he is regularly going to church, but this is not enough.
He is required to repent in public and weep to invoke God’s mercy and forgiveness and therefore the forgiveness of Tanzanians… as Pinda did the other day. He should shed a tear one of these days and beg forgiveness…’ said the reverend. To which remarks I could not restrain myself a burst of chuckles because it sounds a little funny for one to separate a husband from a wife, on the one hand, and for one to demand tears from another adult! But fun notwithstanding, this is not laughing matter.
The point those gunning for the prosecution of a retired president may be missing is that people who run and eventually win the race to become president are human beings like you and me; and not angels. They have temptations and limitations like any other human being. So the only way to ensure that they run their respective offices as presidents is to impose checks and balances on their respective offices so that they do not wind up as absolutes.
To my mind, imposing checks and balances by reforming the constitution is the only way to run this country sustainably in the long run. The founding father of this country, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, once quipped that by the powers invested in the President, going by the current constitution which all past three presidents of this country have bequeathed, he could have himself easily become a dictator if he chose to!
By the constitution in place, the president is not to be questioned by anyone once he names his Cabinet. There is no oversight parliamentary committee that subjects any of his appointees to scrutiny. Secondly, decisions by the Cabinet, made under closed doors under the president’s chairmanship are not only confidential but unquestionable.
So, any president installed at that white-walled mansion along Magogoni street - next to the fish market on the way to Kigamboni in this city - is the one who decides which multinational company wins which tender as long as it is recommended by his respective minister and that decision approved by the Cabinet ultimately chaired by him.
One can see clearly that there are no oversight committees or transparent processes to subject such cabinet decisions to scrutiny. Because we are dealing with human presidents and not angels, under this absolute arrangement, it is easy for a president to award himself something, isn’t it? Hence my argument reflected in the heading of this perspective, it is both urgent and high time to institute constitutional reforms, enshrining checks and balances for this country’s presidency.
And this is because we have already made a plausible step forward that today we are talking of a fourth freely elected president. Along with this success, we should retain and respect safeguards of the current constitution to let our past leaders live in peace as one way to avert a Pandora Box that could lead to divisive trends as seen from voices echoed from churches and elsewhere.
Every mature state in the world has overt and covert methods of correcting a situation without raising eye-brows or hauling a whole former president to court. If facts and evidence point to a former president awarding himself a tender while in office, then ways could be found to expropriate that resource from him quietly without subjecting him to excessive embarrassment. We should look beyond our borders – even in the first world – in the United States and Britain, for example, how they treat their past leaders.
Have you ever heard of a former US President or British Prime Minister billed for prosecution? With all the pain he has inflicted on the Iraqi people and the cost subjected to his country’s tax payers as a result of his county’s unjustified invasion and occupation of Iraq, we will continue to see US President George Bush enjoying his retirement – if anything – he will be busy doing his physical exercises to be able to duck more flying shoes at his direction in those post retirement lectures he is bound to give!
Makwaia wa KUHENGA is a Senior Journalist & Author. E-mail:
makwaia@bol.co.tz Cell: 0754 366520. | | View Visitor's comments on this Story
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