Friday, July 24, 2009

The CCM is squeaky clean!

Aunt Anne Kilango the Same East Member of Parliament (CCM) has been seeing red in the Bunge about government sponsored criminals literary getting away with murder. She has said corruption in government was the root of the unabated poaching and smuggling of ivory from the country.

For the rest of us there was the usual sense of impotent helplessness when we heard that ivory worth $10 million has been intercepted in the Vietnamese port city of Hai Phong. The Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism can talk till they foam in the mouth that they don’t know what is happening. I know they do.

The contingents of the two containers had what was exported as plastic waste. God knows when Tanzania had started exporting plastic wastes to as far away as Vietnam.

Government officials swear they don’t know a thing about the theft. Now after Anne Kilango’s outburst, suddenly the ministry officials are pretending to hunt for the culprits. A couple of very youngish guys have been broguth before the court. The ministry has always stunk to high heaven as part of the raping process of our country’s natural resources.

The Chinese and people from the Far East ‘investors’ seem to love to invest in poached and smuggled Tanzanian ivory. They also ‘invest’ in stealing timber and exotic woods from our country. Of course the government doesn’t know this. There is a large scale collusion, if you ask me.

More shocking is some ministry officials are involved in smuggling tonnes of elephant ivory worth millions of dollars. After Anne Kilango’s ‘pissed off’ speech in the Bunge, the Minister of Natural Resources and Tourism Shamsa Mwangunga hastily said that a parliamentary probe team to unearth the smuggling network is on the works. That is a tried and trusted way of sweeping things under the carpet, which Government officials excel at.

What Aunt Anne Kilango and her types in the Bunge should know is that, probe teams hardly work. You can count with your one hand the number of probe teams which have produced results. Most of the findings of probe teams have been ignored or are gathering dust in the equally dusty government offices. Nothing happens afterwards.

What our lawmakers should know is that Tanzanians are still treated to a culture of ‘crime and no punishment’. It is just a naked insult to Tanzanians for Ministry of Natural Resources officials to say they don’t know a thing about ‘plastic garbage’ worth $10 million plus smuggled to Vietnam. They should be sacked ‘en masse’. Is the ministry being run by the Chinese? If that is so, then we need a Mr. Wang to run it.

Aunt Anne Kilango also let loose another bombshell. She said the guy leading this theft is a CCM big wig. She said she knows the name of the guy and she is going to expose him. Welcome the next story – CCM vs. CCM!

But some of us always remember the words of CCM Secretary-General, Joe Makamba (don’t laugh). Joe told Tanzanians there might be members of the ruling CCM party who are quite rotten – EPA. Tangold, Meremeta, and all the rot we have been hearing over the past three years. But it does not mean that the majority of the CCM are all rotten. The party itself is squeaky clean, he said. Again, dear reader, don’t laugh. It could be painful to your ribs!

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