Lipumba is a pawn: Ukawa

Prof Lipumba announces the decision by the opposition to form a coalition last year.  PHOTO | FILE

What you need to know:

  • The goings-on within CUF can be simply summarised as the fight for power and control of the party between Prof Ibrahim Lipumba and the rest of the leaders forming the party’s supreme governing council. While Prof Lipumba is struggling to retain chairmanship of the party, the supreme governing council is blocking his bid.

Dar es Salaam. The squabbling within the Civic United Front (CUF) is not only crippling the party’s influence in national politics, but is also threatening the existence and welfare of opposition coalition Ukawa.

The goings-on within CUF can be simply summarised as the fight for power and control of the party between Prof Ibrahim Lipumba and the rest of the leaders forming the party’s supreme governing council. While Prof Lipumba is struggling to retain chairmanship of the party, the supreme governing council is blocking his bid.

The infighting has turned chaotic at least on two occasions so far, the first time last month when the party’s national congress voted to endorse Prof Lipumba’s resignation, while his supporters wanted the meeting to discuss a letter he wrote to retract his resignation, before any vote was cast. In the end, chairs were thrown and punches flew, and the meeting was called-off prematurely.

Revoking the decision

The second time was last Saturday, Prof Lipumba and his supporters stormed the party’s Buguruni head offices and forcefully made their way in, beating up whoever dared to block them. That happened just a day after the Registrar of Political Parties, Judge Francis Mutungi, reinstated Prof Lipumba, and also revoked the decision by the party’s council to sack him from the party following the congress chaos.

Yet while Prof Lipumba hailed the Registrar’s ruling, his opponents in CUF dismissed the decision as a non-event saying Judge Mutungi had no legal powers to intervene. They sought precedence in a High Court ruling of May 9, 2005, by Judge Thomas Mihayo. The Judge in part noted that “…I do not see anywhere in the Political Parties Act where the Registrar has power to bless or condemn meetings of political parties or decisions that they make.”

The party’s supreme governing council met yesterday and summoned Prof Lipumba to appear before it and explain why he should not be penalised following the Buguruni chaos. He refused to appear saying the meeting was illegal.

As the CUF twists and turns continue, there are fears that the internal wrangles do not spell doom to the party alone but also to the Ukawa coalition. CUF is the second largest party in the opposition coalition after Chadema.

Out of 116 Members of Parliament under the Ukawa banner, Chadema has 70 MPs, CUF 45 and NCCR-Mageuzi one MP while NLD has none.

So, how is the fallout in the party is threatening Ukawa? To answer that, one has to go back to the beginning of the fallout.

Announcing his resignation in August last year, only two months to the general election, Prof Lipumba said he believed the opposition’s coalition erred in welcoming a CCM defector and former premier Edward Lowassa to Chadema and hand him a presidential ticket.

Prof Lipumba, who also wanted to vie for the presidency under the Ukawa banner, said he was seen as an obstacle by his colleagues in CUF and Ukawa in general and had no option but to step down.

Now, after the elections, he said CUF was losing its popularity and that led him to withdrawing his resignation. The professor said that his priority as of now “is to rebuild CUF especially in the Mainland and afterwards we can talk of Ukawa.”

But to other CUF leaders and their collegues from sister parties, Ukawa is the solid rock that is holding the opposition together within Parliament and outside, and thus any act of disintegrating it is unwelcomed.

Leaders of other Ukawa parties have at times expressed solidarity with CUF’s supreme governance council standpoint in the ongoing leadership wrangle. Soon after Prof Lipumba announced that he wants back in and accused Ukawa of diminishing CUF, Chadema’s chief legal officer and Singida East MP Tundu Lissu told journalists that CUF was better-off without Prof Lipumba. He said throughout Prof Lipumba’s chairmanship CUF failed to win more than two MPs in the Mainland but now they have 10 MPs.

Chadema’s Vice Chairman, Prof Abdallah Safari, told Political Platform that if it is to continue then the in-fighting will ultimately affect Ukawa as a whole. He also accused the registrar of fueling the conflict.

“The spirit of Ukawa is built by our collective unity. So, if any member party is to suffer from internal wrangles then we will all suffer, and lose our credibility among our supporters,” he said adding, “ I believe the Registrar knows the whole truth but he decided to fuel the conflict. He knows that he doesn’t have the legal powers to resolve the matter. My call to Prof Lipumba is that, if he thinks he’s not been served with justice he should take his case to court and not to the Registrar.”

The former secretary general of NCCR-Mageuzi, Mr Samwel Ruhuza, said experience showed that Tanzanians tend to think opposition parties are of a similar nature.

“When one party errs they blame all of them. So, what’s happening in CUF must be resolved as soon as possible because the continuation of the dispute will cause people to lose faith in the opposition camp as whole,” he said.

There are those who believe Prof Lipumba is being used to sabotage Ukawa. “With the Registrar’s actions it is all clear now that there’s a grand plan to weaken Ukawa. They are using him (Lipumba) to divide CUF but their ultimate target is Ukawa. The same police who are banning political rallies are the one who are escorting him to storm CUF offices. We know that Ukawa is a threat and we will not let anyone demolish our unity.”