By DR AZAVELI FEZA LWAITAMA

Where the Presidential election campaigns are concerned, competitive politics risks suffering incalculably from any dubious ethical logic employed by journalists and media executives who are inclined towards self-censorship on what they write about the incumbent President.

These journalists seem to forget that the incumbent President is a contestant in the current presidential race just like his competitors.  He chose, of his own free will, to contest for the country’s top job and he must be put to the same robust scrutiny, as are all the other contestants.

 The Tanzanian electorate must be assisted by the media to find out everything about the personality of every contestant. It is not enough for the contestants just to market the sweet promises contained in the election manifestos of the political parties whose flag they are flying.

I am happy that the Chadema presidential contestant did not claim that journalists who asked him to give details of his marital status were engaged in vitriol and personal insults against his person!  

 It is convoluted logic to interpret adherence to the election ethical code as barring journalists or citizens in general asking presidential contestants to give detailed accounts of their past ethical behaviour! It would have been ethically ludicrous for the Chadema presidential aspirant to seek to silence questions being asked about whether he was once a Catholic priest, for instance.

The Chadema candidate candidly responded to the legitimate inquiries about his past ethical conduct. Neither he nor Chadema claimed that such inquiries were abusive or impolite. That is how it should be.

In my humble view, ethical logic actually requires that the CCM candidate would gain greater public trust by responding candidly to the allegations that his political competitors are raising about aspects of his past professional ethical conduct.

Brushing off these allegations by claiming that raising them violates some election ethical code suggests that such a code was meant to muzzle free press. It also suggests that the said election code was meant to bar the public from making inquiries regarding some uncomfortable aspects of a presidential candidate’s personal life.

Tanzanians are entitled to know a lot about the personal life of every contestant. This is because once one agrees to contest to be elected the President of a republic like ours one has to accept a considerable level of intrusion into ones privacy.  

Competitive politics ought to offer serious alternatives not just in terms of the policies (sera) of the parties under whose banner candidates are contesting, but also in terms of whether the candidate each party has presented to the electorate is the best person that that party can offer.

The party may have good policies but may fail to convince the voters about who ought to lead that party in implementing those good policies.  One may recall the situation that led the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom replacing Margaret Thatcher with John Major and the Labour Party, in that same country, replacing Tony Blair with Gordon Brown.   

That is why critical thinking suggests that some sections of the mass media in Tanzania are using convoluted ethical logic  in assessing what constituted unethical behaviour in the current election campaigns.   Case in point was last Saturday when the TBC authorities decided to cut out some elements from the live broadcast of Chadema’s launch of its national campaign for the election of its candidate for the Presidency.

 It was not clear to me what criteria was used by the TBC in considering the said elements offensive and in violation of the code of ethics that all political parties contesting the election had signed. One would have thought that TBC would have left it to CCM to complain to the appropriate authorities as to whether the allegations levelled against the CCM presidential candidate could be construed as personal insults or legitimate demands being made on the contestant to offer his side of the story and thus clear his name.

The public is entitled to know as much as possible about party policies as well as the personal qualities of the individuals who the parties are asking the voters to elect to be their head of state.  No signing of some so-called election code of conduct can give a blanket cover for the any contestant to choose not to respond honestly and truthfully to allegations being levelled against some aspect of their past personal conduct, in public office or private.  

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