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By Anil Kija
The Political Platform Correspondent
Dar es Salaam. Examining the history of Tanzanian’s political system one comes across a riddle of the relationship between the National Assembly and the ruling party’s National Executive Committee (NEC).
Former vice chancellor of the University of Dar es Salaam Pius Msekwa found the conundrum worth his Master’s degree thesis topic before he left the Hill to serve as the ruling party’s secretary-general in 1977.
Msekwa had played an instrumental task in supervising the drafting of the party’s constitution along with Sheikh Thabit Kombo from Zanzibar beforehand.
His thesis definitely contributed to reform the relationship between the two institutions in multipartism with a view of grappling with challenges, including a combative role arising from Members of Parliament.
This background helps to put into perspective latest changes in the party’s constitution intending to limit members eying parliamentary seats from concomitantly aspiring for NEC membership.
Being the CCM soul with a cohesion it needs to function as a single political organ with a constant solidarity countrywide, NEC cannot tolerate its members’ loyalty to other institutions, including arms of government such as Bunge.
And traditionally, no grave division has ever surfaced within NEC. When Parliament itinerary was turbulent and the government constantly faced challenges from MPs, NEC was an organ to lean on and restore the party authority.
When the country’s political system was still at its nascent stage between 1958 and 1965 when the Interim Constitution of Tanzania was in force, a crisis emerged within the Tanganyika National Union (Tanu) rank and file.
With the ‘three-vote’ system, which called for two additional candidates to shoulder an aspirant standing for one racial group, it was hard for the non-racial Tanu to bring an assemblage to its political ambit.
Sections of the party resisted and some dissented along with secretary-general Zuberi Mtemvu.
Some of those, who remained, dissented after independence when the Father of the Nation, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, unveiled a multiracial team instead of the envisaged militant Tanu lineup, fueling Africanisation and religiosity.
The Father of the Nation took a leaf from Ghana’s book and introduced Preventive Detention Act in 1962, inviting a fresh dissent from his own rank such as Christopher Kasanga Tumbo, who forwent his ambassadorial post to oppose Mwalimu Nyerere.
The January 1964 mutiny, which had almost overthrown Tanu government and the fallout, which led to the curbing of all autonomous civic organisations by bringing them under the umbrella of the ruling party, were other key instances of rebellion attempts, which Mwalimu Nyerere had successfully foiled.
The Father of the Nation dissolved the breadth of army and Tanu Youth League served as his basis for recruiting new officer cadres along with the rank and file.
The trade union movement shifted from the Tanganyika Federation of Labour to the National Union of Tanzanian Workers (Nuta) and in the wake of the Union, the interim constitution brought in ‘one party democracy,’ whereby Tanu at district level nominated two or three aspirants ahead of elections.
The Arusha Declaration was another example of how the NEC served as a basis for policy setting instead of Parliament. Even cabinet ministers were not informed of the NEC meeting of January 29 in Arusha, until the Declaration itself was proclaimed on February 5 1967.
The decision was partly meant to prevent university students, who were not impressed by the introduction of National Service, from taking to the streets in protest of the force, which intended to quell elitism and make youth engage in voluntary work.
Eight MPs were dismissed from party membership in 1968 allegedly for constantly dissenting on party authority in Parliament and it was quite clear from then on that NEC was supreme indeed.
After the multiparty system was re-introduced in 1992, Parliament decreed the formation of a government of Tanganyika within the Union, bringing the nation to almost a meltdown.
This was partly because NEC was powerless to Bunge, as multipartism had given the National Assembly a huge boost of popular confidence, and only the CCM retired chairman, Mwalimu Nyerere, battled it with his bare hands by daring MPs to face the people. The lawmakers relented.
With Mwalimu long gone, parliamentary dissent seems destabilising the party one again, as it faces a big challenge from its own MPs than from the opposition, hence prompting internal change.
What is being rectified is a situation, which makes MPs believe their parliamentary office is far greater than their NEC membership and use the latter merely to buttress their hold on their parliamentary seats.
NEC membership is being separated from that of the National Assembly to properly check MPs conduct. Lawmakers on the ruling party’s ticket currently exercise control on the parliamentary behavior, as they constitute the majority of NEC membership. Chances of dissent will in this way be greatly trimmed, as withdrawing the party’s membership of a dissenting individual will be much easier than calling on him or her to resign from leadership posts as the ongoing ‘sloughing off’ campaign advocates for.
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