Uncharted waters: ACT thrust creates triangular election map, thrill.

Alliance for Change and Transparency (ACT) leader Zitto Kabwe addresses a public rally in Mwanza recently.

Legendary French President Charles de Gaulle (d. 1970) is reputed to have declared that "a week is a long time in politics," which sums up the kaleidoscopic movement that has come up right before our eyes. 

 

It is in relation to how the political map of the country is  changing well before the various political parties have found their feet ready for the general elections, new opportunities coming up for aspirants especially for parliamentary and ward polls, but also the presidency. A king-maker has been born named ACT.

 

What is daunting is the manner in which the party has scaled three levels of growth in the space of one month, first graduating from a crisis-ridden infant party like CCJ and CCJK before it, to stand on firm footing.

 

 This occurred after it handed a party card to ex-Kigoma North MP Zitto Kabwe, and at that moment the party was reconstituted, topping the chairmanship with supreme leadership handed to the ex-MP. 

 

 As befits a pre-electoral atmosphere, newly inaugurated ACT went on campaign stump to get members, prepare for polls.

 

Despite that everyone knew that Zitto Kabwe was a popular MP, there was still an impression that parties could more than individuals, so he was likely to fade out without CHADEMA anchorage. There was a debate with his ex-colleagues at Ufipa Street, Kinondoni area in Dar es Salaam where his old party has its headquarters, as to whether he brought up the party or, on the contrary, it brought him up. 

 

In life there are lessons that are hard to learn, so soon CHADEMA was learning it owed Zitto more than would care to admit.

The psychological contention with CHADEMA was supposed to take the whole year as Zitto seeks to enhance his legitimacy, and starts to scout for presidential material, now that he is himself out of the contest.

 

 But it was soon becoming clear the debate with CHADEMA was irrelevant to ACT, and an aghast CHADEMA was now waking up to declare that ACT was its 'enemy number one.' From opposing CCM, it now principally opposes ACT. 

 

Before the ink had dried over ACT's scaling of the second ladder to become a party on equal terms with CHADEMA and ready to take malcontents of both the old opposition party and the ruling party, a third stage beckoned. 

 

 As top CCM secretariat officials continued to swear they mean to sideline Edward Lowassa, and amid fertile rumours of Zitto-Mwigulu Nchemba and Lowassa artery, the supreme ACT leader formally invited he former premier to join ACT, on condition of explaining how he got his wealth. That is easy.

 

Someone has recently done the job for Lowassa, and all he would need is to rubber stamp that explanation.

 

 His name is advocate Nyaronyo Kicheere, a former secondary school teacher turned journalist, trained as a lawyer at UDSM and is a prominent name in media and human rights litigation in the city of Dar es Salaam at present.

 

 He gave a simple explanation, as to how Ed Lowassa bought a large coffee farm in the 1980s in an area that later became the principal low density residential area in Arusha, selling plots for 10m each. As the farm was cut up into 400 such plots, would Lowassa be poor?

 

That explanation took care of Mwalimu's old criticism against Lowassa, that he was director at the Arusha International Conference Centre (AICC) for two years or so and he had ten daladalas thereafter, implying, purposely or otherwise, that he stole monies there. 

 

The lawyer effusively and humorously insisted that the former premier was squeak clean, that there was no public monies in what he owns, and more significantly, he dishes out largely his own money, no debts being incurred. 

 

It means he is not covered by caution that Mwalimu raised in 1995, as to how to pay debts incurred to enter Ikulu.

 

The possibility of a Lowassa passage into ACT as candidate, without having to go through a humiliating CCM process of explaining what he has given to numerous people to campaign for him, just denouncing those machinations, could change the calendar of events. 

 

With Zitto seemingly capable of drawing  a third or more of CHADEMA followers to him, and Lowassa capable of doing the same for CCM followers, an overwhelming axis can be formed within the context of the run up to the polls, from a party that barely existed  as of first of April.

 

 That is why, as Gen, de Gaulle declared, a week is a long time in politics, and no weeks have seen politics move faster than this, ever.

 

At the moment only that scenario is plausible to draw up in the political map, as what follows next is merely the subject of dreams as in the story about Alinacha, that this axis wins polls and takes office.

 

 Then there is a problem of repeating what occurred in the fourth phase as an ethos of vibrant rejection  and combating of public-private partnership is official Zitto parliamentary line, while the former premier is far more guarded, though in the past he also tore up the city water contract. 

 

That such an axis could improve the business environment would depend on how far Lowassa can shake off ACT influence.

 

Were such fusion to take place, it would be interesting to see what campaign roles fall upon the rump ruling party as well as the rump opposition party, their respective stings in popular imagination hived off to form a new axis that is untrammeled with the need to share out power, and influence, with the also-rans in party organisation. How far they would still pull crowds and make an impact in the general elections would depend on enthusiasm that remains after such event, as in soccer side; if they bind together, they survive, but if they fail that test they collapse. It depends on the level of pain inflicted.

 

Since the formal notice for such a fusion has already been given, it is not a sin - as Mwalimu Nyerere underlined back in 1990 - to start projecting possible outcomes. 

 

At the moment the CCM Secretariat has retained electoral forms for aspirants, waiting up to June or thereabouts before releasing them, but even if the urge to start campaigning is stiff on the ex-premier's side, it is not plausible to take a move before Mangula and Co. do anything unacceptable. The technique ties down Lowassa to CCM for the moment but also helps him.

 

At each instance that CCM has raised this or that stumbling block for the former premier it has ended up helping him, as for instance in February last year. 

 

Stopping premature prenomination campaigns left Ngoyai top of the league table, and others barred from assailing him. Of late another banning order of visitations came up, which means the others too won't organise any such visits, and voters remember only the visits to Ngoyai. 

 

Now it is heard he is given easy conditions to join ACT as Mrema in 1995, with no Nyerere to frustrate him as previously the case, not due to any scandal but unacceptable  machinations of party bigwigs. It sounds like a fairy tale but it could happen.