Trim presidential powers!

Religious leaders in the country have been meeting and protested against the excessive presidential powers, establishment of independent Judiciary and build a free Parliament.

The religious leaders call was contained in a 17-point document issued Dar last week at the end of a three-day inter-faith conference to discuss their role in promoting good governance in the country. Among the first thing they should have demanded from the government would have been to boot out the present minister of good governance, Sophia Simba, or axe the ministry altogether.

Anyone in his right mind, not only in the clerics in the United Republic of Tanzania, should think like that. In fact election laws, for example should be amended or scrapped a long time ago. In fact so far the government should concentrate in teaching most of us the meaning of ‘good governance’. Is seems most of us, badly need an elementary lesson in civics. One would think officialdom associate the subject with a beauty contest and fashion.

What is the point of going into the 2010 General Elections when we all know who will win and how the ‘elections’ will be won? Now that all Tanzanians know who is thieving with impunity and what crimes are being committed against the people of Tanzania and nothing happens.

Let’s start from the top. It is, and always has been, that those who will ‘eat’ in the next five years will be determined by how close they are to the throne. With all due respect, but the clerics have been pussy-footing with this topic since independence. What the colonialists left us were never democracies. What they left us were right-wing dictatorships, most with even even worse than the colonialist themselves.

Some few African countries have been lucky to have rulers with the fear of God in them. Like Tanzania. But most of them have simply been despicable monsters which normal people don’t want to be associated with.

The politicians know the value of being seen pally pallyling with the clerics in pictures. But the voice from the clerics should have been much louder than what we are getting. Tanzania is being raped and allowed to be raped by ‘investors’ with the tacit nod of people who call themselves leaders (rulers, to many of us)

The men and women of God, who live with us, should not acquiesce to this injustice and let the rulers get away with sin. Sin is sin and as people of God with should be more vocal against the on-going injustice, against the people of Tanzania.

I know no normal ruler will readily see the wisdom of the separation of powers in the ruling structure. But they all want to play chief. Only a few dozen years ago the chief used to be called husbands-of-husbands and other feudal claptrap. Believe me; they still want to be that. Our rulers sub-consciously want to be kings for life. They are eager to be called king-of-kings. Whoever they are, they are never mortal. They never let power nonchalantly flow off like water off a duck’s back, like Mzee Madiba (Mandela) or Mwalimu Nyerere. The rulers want to wear it to their graves.

They want only their friends and their hangers-on – some of whom we, the wananchi, question their sanity, to rule. Their only qualification is being friends with the throne. This just cannot go on.

If the moral authority in society is to keep quiet, and some obviously demented thugs are ‘given’ the authority to make mayhem in the country, then it is going to be partly the responsibility of the clerics and the executive. Power is never given. Power is wrestled

Tanzania should be a meritocracy, it now is has been turned by a ruling den of some Mafiosi, who are morally bankrupt without even shred of moral compunction in them. You know why we fail? Because our countries are being ruled by governors, who used to be called Sir Richard Turnbull and others, for the queen. The religious bodies are not helping by kowtowing to the whims of the kings in our countries, euphemistically called ‘president’.