Dar es Salaam-based political and social commentator
This past week, the speaker of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), who also happens to chair Tanzania’s parliament, Tulia Ackson, came under fire in Geneva from a couple of her members who were not pleased by the way she had handled her visits to a couple of countries in conflict.
This is rather commonplace, as members will always haggle over who gets visited first, how long the visit takes, and even the smile or frown they see on the visitor’s face, etc.
Defending her record, she spoke firmly about members being fair to each other and not falling in the pitfalls of double standards, itemising some actions she had undertook that were similar to the ones for which she was being “crucified”.
She was cogent, spirited, articulate and self-assertive, and she was duly applauded by her assembly. Honestly it was a moment when every Tanzanian — nay, every African — watching and listening must have felt that rush of oomph that assails you when one of your likes does you proud.
It was like, this is a woman of substance who will not let people walk over her, though she may be young and has been president of the body for only so long, and the people she presides over may be older, and more experienced, and more and more, to the nth level.
As a feel-good moment it has few parallels, especially for one who has witnessed moments when delegates have been known to distance themselves from their own delegations because they know that a “disaster” in their midst is about to take the floor.
This what old man Julius Nyerere used to refer to as the “smoking breaks” which delegates used to take after Tanzanian delegations started to sound empty and irrelevant.
Tulia will have left a mark on that audience, and as these things go, many delegates will be bowing to her as they pass her in the high-columned corridors and foyers.
They will also learn in good time that she taught law at the prestigious Dar es Salaam university before she ventured into politics.
But those who may be tempted to go further in their investigation will also find out that back home she chairs a hobbled and muted parliament, which fact gives her little authority to claim any high ground in her international disputations:
“Hobbled”, because this (her local) parliament cannot claim to be properly constituted, having allowed itself to operate without the requisite number of women legislators chosen by political parties, even as per today’s constitution “Muted,” because it has refused to discuss burning issues, which are common knowledge to everyone, because the Speaker, the same Tulia, has refused to take judicial notice of. Which should perhaps call for another adjective: “Deaf.”
She has, quite unfortunately, forgotten that she is head of one of the pillars of the state, and that her branch is responsible for controlling and directing the Executive, curbing its excesses and curtailing its appetites.
Our government is the most profligate we ever had, and it looks like it thinks the money at its disposal is limitless, with the nonchalant, devil-may-care spendthrift attitudes it exhibits.
When parliament can, without so much as a thought, scrap health insurance for school children while importing Land Cruisers at the price of a health centre each, you know it is a deaf parliament in charge.
When a member of parliament can be silenced when he wants to debate the spate of disappearances, abductions and killings in the country, one should know the House has been muted.
Since the reintroduction of multiparty politics in Tanzania some 30 years ago, we have been observing the erosion of the authority of parliament, slowly settling in the role of a sterile talking shop clinging onto the petticoats of the Executive, a far cry from the role of guiding and asking questions of government, especially where it concerns the Exchequer.
It is possible the long years when Julius Nyerere and Speaker Adam Sapi were leading parliament—and the country— by the nose have left their impact, but are we not supposed to slough off our infancy and become adults?
What is the use, then, of getting our best legal brains into parliament if they are going to behave like the innumerable ignoramuses, we have had all along, and how are we supposed to tell the difference, anyway?
I cannot pretend to not know that our speaker is desperate to somehow make it in the murky waters of Tanzanian politics, wherein it is not principle that carries you but bootlicking, but how do you juggle that misfortune with the recent performance at IPU? How do you handle such traits of schizophrenia?
It is unconscionable to want to run with the hares in Geneva while hunting with the hounds in Dodoma.
Unless, of course, we want to lend credence to the Gado cartoon in which we are given to understand that upon entering CCM service one has to give up one’s brain for safe keeping until one reemerges a few years later?
However, the saving grace is that Tulia is young, and she has a working brain. That shine that is believed to be political power— which has led many to do Faustian compacts—will soon manifest itself as the mirage it is.
