The protest march was peaceful, so what was all the fuss about?

It all started like another verbal tug-of-war between political rivals which, if mishandled, could lead to a catastrophic flare-up, and many an observer said, “We’ve been here before,” and waited with bated breath for something terrible to happen.

The main opposition party in the country had stated its opposition to what it saw as a government ploy to scuttle what had seemed as a reasonably good effort by President Samia Suluhu Hassan to normalise the political situation by allowing political parties to do what political parties do, that is, politics.