Dar es Salaam. Good morning! The Chanzo is here with a rundown of major news stories reported in Tanzania on Wednesday, June 22, 2022.
CCM drums up demands for New Constitution
After months of saying that the New Constitution is not the top priority for many Tanzanians, the ruling Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM) seems to have started realizing the urgency around the demands for the New Constitution in Tanzania.
The party’s secretary for publicity and ideology Shaka Hamdu Shaka told journalists in the capital Dodoma on Wednesday that the second longest-ruling party in Africa sees the need to revive the stalled constitution-writing process for the “larger national interests.”
“CCM is emphasising the need for the New Constitution in the country given the current context,” Mr Shaka read the party’s National Executive Committee’s (NEC) resolutions. President Samia Suluhu Hassan chaired the NEC’s meeting which sat Wednesday, June 22, 2022, in Dodoma.
“[The government] should find better ways that would enable the revival of the stalled constitution-writing process and complete the writing of the New Constitution for the larger national interests,” Mr Shaka added.
Mr Shaka said that the writing of the New Constitution is important given the ongoing dialogue in the country aimed at achieving political reconciliation among Tanzania’s key political players.
He hinted that the latest CCM’s position on the issue of the New Constitution is specifically the result of the ongoing engagements between the party, opposition party CHADEMA and the government.
CHADEMA, through its national chairperson Freeman Mbowe, has held at least three meetings with President Samia in the last three months in what appears as the party’s strategy to lobby the Head of State to revive the constitution-writing process.
These engagements are independent of the process led by the presidential task force on political reconciliation that CHADEMA has boycotted, saying it lacks the legitimacy to lead such a process.
The proposals tabled by the task force want the government to revive the stalled process after the 2025 general election, suggesting that now the focus should be directed towards reforming Tanzania’s electoral management laws to ensure free and fair elections.
CHADEMA, on its part, has been insisting that the New Constitution is required now, and that Tanzania should go to the polls in 2025 under the New Constitution. Wednesday’s announcement by CCM means that CHADEMA’s influence has so far been able to penetrate the former’s corridors.
In his announcement on Wednesday, Mr Shaka sounded more like an opposition politician than a publicity secretary for the ruling party. For example, he even advocated for the freeing of all people currently facing political-influenced prosecutions.
A few days ago, a ruling party politician would hardly acknowledge even the presence of those people in Tanzania.
“We would like to guarantee other political parties in Tanzania that CCM will continue to promote democracy [in Tanzania] without affecting our unity, peace and solidarity,” Mr Shaka said. “It is our hope that these parties will also continue to cooperate with us in that mission.”
CHADEMA jubilant as court dismisses objections by its former cadres
Members and leaders of the opposition party CHADEMA burst with excitement on Wednesday following the decision by the High Court of Tanzania to dismiss objections filed by the party’s sacked members, which include former Kawe MP Halima Mdee.
The nineteen former CHADEMA female leaders filed an objection at the court with the aim of preventing their expulsion from the party but the court dismissed the injunction over a technical issue. Now that the court has dismissed the objection, all eyes are on Dodoma to see if Speaker of Parliament Tulia Ackson will sack the Special Seats MPs from the lawmaking body.
The senior female leaders, who were the bulwark of the CHADEMA’s Women Wing (BAWACHA), fell from grace when they accepted the National Electoral Commission’s (NEC) appointment as Special Seat MPs at a time when the party had decided to boycott the positions as part of its protests against the results of the 2020 general election.
Speaking outside of the High Court premise in Dar es Salaam, CHADEMA Secretary-General John Mnyika said that Speaker Tulia now will have no excuse for keeping the nineteen female MPs in the parliament.
“We will explain further steps that the party will take in future but now we want these people removed from the parliament,” Mr Mnyika told journalists outside the court. “There is no longer an injunction nor any other excuses. The country’s constitution must be respected.”
Read the full story here.
France shares its approach to conservation with Tanzania
French ambassador to Tanzania Nabil Hajlaoui shared his country’s experience with conservation with the government yesterday, underlining the importance of inclusion in achieving sustainable conservation.
He was contributing to a Zoom discussion organised on Wednesday by a local nonprofit Watch Tanzania to discuss the government’s plans to ‘relocate’ native people of Ngorongoro to designated areas of Handeni, Tanga and Simanjiro, Manyara.
The plan has pitted the government against the native people of Ngorongoro as well as human rights activists who have interpreted the “relocation” exercise as the “uprooting” of native people from their “ancestral land.”
The government has in turn dismissed these accusations, saying the exercise is carried out on “an absolutely voluntary basis,” adding that the relocation is important if the UNESCO-inscribed World Heritage Site is to be preserved.
Against this background, the moderator of the Wednesday’s discussion asked Mr Hajlaoui if he would mind sharing his country’s experience in addressing the issues of similar nature given the number of conservation areas the Western European nation has and its global reputation for attracting the highest number of tourists worldwide.
In his response, Mr Hajlaoui said that what France has been doing over the period of sixty years is to operate its conservation areas in an inclusive way, explaining: “The idea is to create local organisations, that are public of course, that will be operating these reserves in ways that take into account all of these interests.”
These include the interests in the ecology and preservation of these areas; the interests of the population that lives in the area; and finally the interests of private investors that have economic interests in those areas. Mr Hajlaoui said that after sixty years of experimenting with this approach, the areas became even more attractive to investors.
“This model is a win-win one in the sense that we preserve these areas, bring more wealth weather to citizens living in those areas of revenues to private firms that have invested in those areas,” said Mr Hajlaoui, adding that he would share more of the French experience in the conservation issue with Tanzanian authorities.
Mr Hajlaoui’s model resembles more or less the one put forward by the opposition party ACT-Wazalendo in its recommendations of the best ways through which the government could resolve the Ngorongoro issue.
In its submission, the party called for the disbandment of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority (NCAA) and a joint company owned by native people and the government should take its place, with the latter responsible for running the company.
But these proposals seem far from being considered by the government. The Minister for Natural Resources and Tourism Pindi Chana, for example, said during the same debate on Wednesday that the government won’t allow wild animals to co-exist with human beings.
“If we let wild animals live with human beings today, how will the situation be after 10 or 20 years?” Chana asked rhetorically. “These are fundamental questions that we have to ask ourselves.”
Meanwhile, the Commissioner-General of Immigration (CGI) Anna Makakala on Wednesday launched a 10-day operation targeting illegal immigrants in the Loliondo Game Controlled Area (LGCA) as part of fresh directives issued by the government earlier last week.
Train accident kills four, injures 132 in Tabora
At least four passengers, including two children and two adults, were killed and 132 others left injured after a passenger train derailed in Tanzania’s central region of Tabora on Wednesday morning, the Tanzania Railways Corporation (TRC) said in a statement.
“The 132 passengers who were injured have been rushed to the Regional Hospital of Kitete, Tabora for treatment and they are doing well,” TRC head of communication and public relations Jamila Mbarouk said.
She said TRC was doing whatever it took to facilitate the survivors of the accidents to reach their destination of Dar es Salaam.
Investigations into the cause of the accident are ongoing, according to TRC.
“After knowing the cause of the accident, we will act accordingly,” reads a part of the statement.
The train which had eight carriages was carrying 930 passengers from Kigoma Station to Dar es Salaam on Tuesday at around 8 pm before the accident happened at 11 am on Wednesday.
The accident occurred after the eight carriages fell off at Malolo, 10 km from the Tabora Station, with the cause of the derailment, according to Ms Mbarouk, still unknown.
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