Former Prime Minister Frederick Sumaye’s criticism on National Assembly’s plan to more than double lawmakers’ sitting allowance rate must have riled the assembly Deputy Speaker Job Ndugai. He consulted newsrooms and gave them his hotline number to react to Sumaye’s comments well before newspapers carried the story. And he had strongly managed to react as he intended.

Reading between the lines of his reaction, I gather Ndugai doubts if Sumaye had the moral authority to fault the National Assembly’s decision to raise MP’s sitting allowances. Ndugai argues that the former Premier had initiated retired leaders’ allowances, leading him to pocket hefty allowances compared to those that come with the National Assembly Deputy Speaker’s post.

I doubt if his argument substantiates the demand for the National Assembly to increase the MPs’ perks. If I correctly heard, the National Assembly Speaker Anne Makinda attributed the increase to rising costs of living in Dodoma. She neither mentioned hefty allowances paid to top retired leaders since a decade ago nor did she compare Sumaye’s allowance with hers, let alone that of the Deputy Speaker.

Such a school of thought is on one hand tantamount to propping up reprisals, while two wrongs actually don’t make it right. On the other hand, if leaders are sidelined for their past mistakes, who will stand tall enough to comment on fundamental national issues?

In case he has forgotten, the Deputy Speaker should be reminded of a calibre of similar retired leaders referred to as statesmen elsewhere. Unless Ndugai is set to gag retired leaders’ attempt to criticise the government of the day, he was supposed to concentrate on Sumaye’s central message instead of attacking the critic personally, I believe. Before he clings to his argument, Ndugai should consider enumerating qualifications for people eligible for criticising the government.

I wonder if the National Assembly Deputy Speaker can defend pensioners’ demand for increased benefits if he declares that Sumaye is earning more allowance than he does for doing nothing after his retirement. What exactly has prompted Ndugai to say this in public? He does not only know the law on the retired top leaders’ perks, but he is equipped with a post and an opportunity to scrap it in case he believes the environment in which the statute was enacted was questionable.

Otherwise, Ndugai has missed the point by attacking Sumaye personally and sidestepping the arguments, as he was duty bound to answer basic questions among Tanzanians. Many, including some influential lawmakers, have since been criticising the Bunge decision to apply for increment of sitting allowance, asking whether the costs of living were selectively surging in Dodoma and for MPs alone.

Is Ndugai not ashamed of the government’s failure to settle interns’ outstanding allowances when he insists on increased MPs’ perks from the same coffers?  How can the government fail to provide pupils and students with books they badly need and yet afford to more than double MPs’ sitting allowance rate from Sh70,000 to Sh200,000?

Many patients succumb to diseases because the government cannot afford to buy medicines they need, let alone grant them referrals abroad. Or does Ndugai subscribe to a viewpoint that MPs are more important than other Tanzanians, including the needy?

Peter Nyanje is The Citizen News Editor - This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

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