Tanzanian Association Oslo

CCM is deeply divided

Abraham Lincoln, America’s 16th president and one of history’s most respected leaders, once wrote, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” After a week of political mudslinging that saw veteran politicians calling their counterparts unfit to rule, ministers defending known corrupt suspects, and a former prime minister describing a current cabinet minister as someone who should be admitted to a psychiatric hospital for mental diagnosis, the ruling party would have trouble defending the increasingly fractured foundation of its own house.

Though Chama cha Mapinduzi has for years brushed off intimations that the party was deeply divided, the details leaked from a number of closed-door meetings in Dodoma over the this week show that Africa’s oldest ruling party has devolved into a handful of squabbling factions that seem to have little more in common than their card-carrying party status.

Enduring the shift from a single to multiparty system and maintaining its icon standing on the continent, CCM has weathered a number of storms in the past four decades of its history, but analysts say this recent scuffle is a telling symbol that could be harkening the beginning of the end for the party. The party’s founder, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, spoke some prescient words when he was asked back in the 1990s where a strong and viable opposition party would spring from, now that Tanzania had opened itself to multiparty politics.

CCM’s real opponent, Mwalimu said, would come from within it.

As the political turmoil reached a fever pitch in Dodoma this week, it seemed that certain key cabinet ministers who continue to defend those tainted in corruption scandals are trying desperately to prevent the fissures within the party from consuming it.

Commenting on the situation, former Prime Minister Judge Joseph Warioba said, “We need wisdom to save our party from the brink of collapse. We have had tough times during our era, but we didn’t get as low as our colleagues have gotten.”

“We spent four days discussing Zanzibar’s former president, who was being accused of planning to break the union, but finally everything was sorted out amicably because we were dealing with issues not personalities,” Warioba told The Guardian on Sunday.

“Today our leaders are busy managing personalities instead of debating issues. This is sad news for my party as well as our country,” the former premier said in Dar es Salaam this week. One of the senior members of the special committee that chaired the stormy meeting in Dodoma told The Guardian on Sunday, “What I heard and witnessed has shown me that our party will split anytime.”

“Our legislators and cabinet ministers have proved that there’s a big rift that poses a serious threat to the party’s unity as well as the future of our nation,” the member, who declined to be named, told The Guardian on Sunday. “Now I believe very soon there will be two parties within CCM and that’s our end.”

Speaking to The Guardian on Sunday over the weekend, economist and politician Prof Ibrahim Lipumba said that the unsubstantiated accusations Minister Simba made about her colleagues constituted an abuse of the power and trust bestowed upon her by President Jakaya Kikwete. “We are told that, the meeting was a close-door event but the fact that almost all newspapers carried the same story leads us to believe that the story was genuine,” Lipumba said. “If that is the case, we can conclude that things in CCM as well as in the government are now in shambles.”

Simba should understand that even when speaking in a CCM forum she is still representing the government, and especially President Kikwete, who appointed her, Lipumba said, and she should not have taken advantage of whatever access to information she had as a result of her ministerial status to exact revenge on fellow politicians.

CCM’s tumult, and the lack of respect among its members and cabinet ministers, reflects a clear sign of lack of collective responsibility within the government and a leadership vacuum within the ruling party, he said.

Lipumba said there is no doubt that CCM is at the brink of collapse, and he forecasted more social problems if the current CCM and national leadership is given another term to lead. “If Nyerere were alive today he would either ask CCM to purge all corrupt members from the party or he would quit CCM and start another party,” Lipumba said.

Political scientist Prof Mwesiga Baregu said the ongoing political ramblings showed there were serious leadership ‘cracks’ in CCM as well as in the government.

“To be frank, what we are witnessing now is a clear manifestation of weak leadership,” he said. He added that CCM currently has no universally respected leaders in the party to whom they can look.

The degree to which the party’s own leaders are viciously attacking its members shows that the party’s ethics have taken a hit, he said, but whether the force will merely shake the foundation or bring the house to the ground remains to be seen.

What transpired?

After a series of denials finally this week came the moment of truth the 72 hours that exposed CCM leaders for who they really are leaving the public wondering whether it is still the same party that they trusted to lead the nation. For three days, the special committee, which was formed in September by the ruling party to investigate the genesis of political attacks against the government within Parliament, invited all CCM legislators to air their views in a round of closed-door talks.

On Tuesday, the committee, chaired by former President Ali Hassan Mwinyi, seemed run a run-of-the-mill party meeting, but on Wednesday the atmosphere changed dramatically when debate between cabinet ministers and MPs escalated to grave accusations and nasty words.

What triggered these accusations was the ongoing war on grand corruption, which in the past few years has claimed some big name casualties like Edward Lowassa, Andrew Chenge, Nazir Karamagi and Ibrahim Msabaha.

According to details made available to The Guardian on Sunday, last weekend a group of those accused of defending corruption within the party held a meeting in Dodoma where they crafted a strategy to respond to their critics at the special committee session this week.

The group collected information on anti-corruption legislators to use strategically against them should they go after CCM cadres who were implicated in some of the major corruption scandals of this decade.

This group allegedly gathered information on Same legislator Anne Killango Malecela the only female MP who fought strongly against grand corruption within Parliament as well as Speaker Samuel Sitta and another 11 MPs who have been outspoken on graft.

On Wednesday night, Sophia Simba, the cabinet minister in charge of anti-corruption and intelligence services, made a series of accusations about Malecela, Sitta and the others, first alleging that Mrs Malecela had been bribed Sh250million in 2005 by Jeetu Patel one of the suspects in External Payment Arrears account scandal to finance her husband John Malecela’s campaign for president.

Mr Malecela was among the top candidates vying for CCM’s presidential nomination before his name was eliminated by the Central Committee.

According to Minister Simba, part of the Sh250million issued by Jeetu Patel was used among other things to finance the luxury wedding between Mrs and Mr Malecela early in 2005.

Minister Simba insisted that those accused of corruption Chenge, Lowassa and partners were clean leaders whose integrity is unquestionable.

Just a day after the attack Mr Malecela one of the country’s veteran and most well respected politicians—strongly refuted Minister Simba’s allegations, saying the latter should be admitted at psychiatric hospital, for a mental diagnosis.

Another veteran politician Kingunge Ngombale Mwiru also joined the fray by blaming Speaker Sitta for the sharp divisions within the ruling party. Minister John Chiligati went so far as to describe Sitta as unfit to be the Speaker of the National Assembly.

Anti-corruption advocates responded to the attacks directed at their camp just as fiercely, with Kishapu MP Fred Mpendazoe calling Minister Simba a hypocritic leader who is defending corrupt leaders because she is one of them.

In a speech made available to the media, Mpendazoe revealed that during the party’s election Minister Simba collected millions of shillings to finance her campaign, but did not disclose the funds to the public.

This is how things are falling apart within the party as leaders expose their sharp division and detest ahead a fierce battle for the throne in 2015 general elections.

SOURCE: GUARDIAN ON SUNDAY