The party entered into a protracted leadership crisis last year over the position of the chairman, leading to its split into two factions, one led by Prof Lipumba and the other by Mr Hamad.
Hamad says can’t sit with Lipumba
Dar es Salaam. Civic United Front (CUF) Secretary-General Seif Sharrif Hamad yesterday said the party would never pardon Prof Ibrahim Lipumba for “betraying” it.
The party entered into a protracted leadership crisis last year over the position of the chairman, leading to its split into two factions, one led by Prof Lipumba and the other by Mr Hamad.
Matters became more complicated, when the Political Parties Registrar, Judge Francis Mutungi, recognised Prof Lipumba as the chairman of CUF contrary to the stand of Mr Hamad’s faction that claims that the don had voluntarily resigned in 2015. Prof Lipumba had resigned from the chairmanship in August 2015, but recanted his resignation in June through a letter to the Registrar.
A meeting of the party’s supreme governing board convened in August last year to formalise Prof Lipumba’s resignation.
Thus, Mr Hamad’s faction went ahead and declared that Prof Lipumba was no longer the party chairman.
“I cannot sit at a roundtable with him (Prof Lipumba) because he is a traitor. I would rather sit with the ruling party CCM for talks being aware that they’re our rivals than Prof Lipumba,” Mr Hamad said during a live interview aired by a local TV station yesterday.
Mr Hamad further accused Prof Lipumba of conspiring with CCM to sabotage CUF in Zanzibar.
He added that the don remained the party enemy because even his membership had been suspended by the party’s supreme governing board after the latter and his supporters stormed into its Buguruni main offices last year beating up whoever tried to block them.
Mr Hamad elaborated that he was certain Prof Lipumba did all this with the help of government agents.
Clarifying why the party did not participate in the 2016 repeat polls in Zanzibar, Mr Hamad said the committee that brought him together with Isle’s President, Dr Ali Mohamed Shein, allegedly went behind his back to announce the re-election, while they were yet to agree on the matter.
On the performance of the fifth phase government, Mr Hamad said President John Magufuli without doubt had done some commendable things, but he still needed to be fair in his administration.
“It is wrong when he only takes to account some officials in the government and lets others walk away untouched even, when they have erred. There should be fairness in leading and punishing people,” he added.
He also criticised the government over its measures that undermine press freedom in the country.
He said the government had been repressing press freedom by drafting repressive media laws, threatening journalists and media houses. He said the information minister should not be given the powers to ban media houses.
