Opposition yet to find breathing space

2015 cast a long shadow over our politics, and as the country prepares itself for another general election in 2020, political events whose origin can be found in the previous general election spread their tentacles to send opposition politics into more chaos.

The long-running and bitter legal battle over the legitimacy of leadership in the Civic United Front (CUF) party ended with Seif Shariff Hamad, one of the most decorated opposition politicians to ever grace the land, leaving the party he helped co-found and launch following the High Court’s ruling in Dar es Salaam which pronounced Prof Ibrahim Lipumba as the bona fide CUF national chairman since Prof Lipumba’s return in June, 2016 to the party he had once abandoned over the dispute of the joint presidential candidate CUF and their allies in Ukawa had picked in Edward Lowassa.

There were celebrations just as there were disappointments from the High Court ruling. In reality though, there were losers all round.

Since the return of multiparty politics, only CCM has bested CUF in terms of national representation as they have managed to win political seats in different parts of the country.

No other opposition party has ever succeeded in that regard.

As Hamad gave his parting shots to Prof Lipumba and his faction, he said some of the offices which had been used by CUF did not belong to the party but were privately owned.

In any other “sane” field, this would have been a bombshell; that one of the leading opposition parties in the country which has been a common presence on the national stage and in the august House in Dodoma, and even at one stage was part to a power-sharing agreement in Zanzibar, could not afford to build offices of its own.

That its political leaders should have resigned or let others lead the party for their failures, alas! That is not the way our politics work. CUF is not the only political party which despite receiving millions of taxpayers’ money each month, these parties can hardly justify how that money is spent.

But what does all this mean going into 2020?

CUF in particular and the opposition in general will step into 2020 in a very weak position. Prof Lipumba’s faction emerging victorious in the court battle in no way gives them a better political footing.

Since his court victory, he has not delivered any speech or said anything that could genuinely translate as peace offering or reaching out to those who do not support his faction.

CUF is no longer the political force it once was and a political price will be paid in full.

The disruptions of the last two years plus set that in motion. To borrow the headline from Mwananchi newspaper of the next day; “Wamegawana”. No victors here.

Even as Hamad delivered his parting shots by vowing to continue with the political struggle, like the recent move by another political titan, Mr Lowassa who returned to his “political home”, his move to another political party reinforces the outsized role individual politicians have come to play especially in opposition politics where political loyalty is increasingly based on the individual or certain individuals and not any political ideals or ideas.

The “swapping” of political parties by high profile individuals further normalizes the idea of shifting political allegiances regardless of one’s political position or standing within their political parties or their political ideology.

Some CUF offices were immediately painted in the colours of the new party Hamad and his allies had pitched their political tent in, again emphasizing the disconnect between national leaders and those who are at the bottom of the political pyramid in their political parties.

These are “independent” politicians in all but name as the law requires them to belong to a political party to do politics.

Opposition political parties enjoyed their greatest electoral success in 2015 in terms of parliamentary seats and the votes their joint presidential candidate received but the political price they have since paid means they go into 2020 on a very different political terrain. The path since then has been frustrating and disappointing and as 2020 beckons they are yet to find a way out of their current many predicaments.