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Opposition parties unity in general elections unlikely
2005-07-08 07:57:50
By Mwondoshah Mfanga
It looks as if there is a political lull in the country at the moment with hardly four months to the general elections. However, that is when you look at things from the surface level.
Underground, there is a lot of activity going on in the country in terms of merging, crossing from one party to another and individual politicians in seeking and guarding whatever gains that one has made.
Despite all these, the question of forging oneness among parties, seems to be hard to come by. even with those which wish to unite with the ruling party.
Why is this the case when all leaders need power that can not, most often, be achieved without unity?
For the past 13 years the main bottleneck to political parties merging has been the legal hamstring—as provided in Act No. 5 of the Political Parties, 1992.
Under the Act, parties that need to merge have to do away with their identities first before they become one.
In other words, it is an act that needs the parties to recreate anew in another body after voluntarily dissolving themselves.
It essentially allows parties to be established, look for their way to Ikulu, parliament or local government councils. However, they are not given flexibility to merge as parties, but as disensembles.
This reason notwithstanding, most attempts at merging have often proved a flop.
Political parties in the country first attempted to form an alliance in the early 1990s under the guardianship of Wilfrem Mwakitwange, then chairperson of PONA.
Known then as NOFI, it was meant to bring together parties in the opposition, so that they could eventually form one party to counteract the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM).
It couldn’t work because the parties’ leaders failed to compromise their identities with those of the perfected organisation.
As parties were longing for the first multi party in the mid 1990s another attempt was made, but it again ended in another flop.
Then known as Umoja wa Demokrasia Tanzania (UDETA), Mabere Marando of NCCR-Mageuzi and Edwin Mtei of Chadema were its harbinger.
The main idea was, again, to stage a single candidate for the presidency and where necessary have a single candidate in parliament and councillor constituencies. One bad thing to learn about it is that it collapsed even before the elections.
The formation of Umoja in 2003 was a third major attempt by the opposition, based on the perennial weaknesses it has experienced.
Led by John Lifa Chipaka of TADEA and John Momose Cheyo of UDP, it has similar objectives to those propagated by its predecessor ’marriage of convenience.’
This time, like in the past, it does not appear that things will work well on the part of the allying opposition parties.
With nine parties, already some parties have breached the very key principles they have said they stand to protect—these include picking candidates singly and not collectively.
Of the nine parties, NCCR-Mageuzi, NLD, UDP, Jahazi Asilia, FORD, NRA, UPDP, TADEA and PPT-Maendeleo, the first four already have picked candidates for Union and in some cases Zanzibar.
Umoja is currently being led by NCCR-Mageuzi’s James Mbatia, who only last month led his party through a special congress which picked University of Dar es Salaam senior lecturer Dr Sengondo Mvungi its presidential candidate.
Mbatia, however, is optimistic that the opposition still has the opportunity to forge unity before the picking of forms in NEC on Monday.
However, political science observers see no light at the end of the tunnel with this trend. The most that parties can do is to stage own candidates separately, and where it is impossible vacuum is what shall come to reign.
Besides the legal entanglement, political science observers have other reasons why opposition parties in the country fail to have meaningful merging processes.
Political pathology or what is referred to as ’unity shyness’ is one of them. Investigations by this paper has shown that some leaders are bashful of uniting because they feel that by so doing they are going to lose whatever little titles they have.
Because of this they see that it is necessary to remain with what they have rather than attempting unity, only to find later that they have no organ to articulate their interests. In other words, for them, it is better to lead in hell than serve in heaven.
Related to this is the growing level of mistrust among political parties’ leaders.
Henry Kyara of the recently registered Sauti ya Umma (SAU) says that previous experience gathered by the opposition has shown that many parties are not trustworthy.
However, he believes that if a popular leader could emerge somewhere and happen to bring together the rest of the leaders, there is a possibility of forging alliance among them.
PPT-Maendeleo chairman Peter Kuga Mziray says his party is flexible when it comes to forging unity among parties. The criterion is not whether the merging party is in the opposition. But what matters is ’’whether the candidate being staged fulfills the conditions needed for a good leader,’’ he asserts.
Jahazi Asilia, with its headquarters based in Zanzibar says it would prefer concentrating in the Isles and not the entire Union, one of the reasons being financial constraints.
Some people say it may seem that it is because of this that it has decided to stage a presidential candidate for the Isles and none for the Union.
Forum for Reconstruction and Development (FORD’s) chairman, Ramadhani Mzee has a different opinion from the two. He is more concerned with material gains than anything else.
Mzee, who specifically asserts that he is ready for unity under Umoja parties says, ’’for a party to unite with another, it must first know what it stands to gain in the deal.’’
A person who hardly minces words is CHAUSTA’s chairman James Mapalala.
The harbinger of multiparty system in the country and who for reasons known to himself was never a member of the ruling party CCM says unity of opposition parties is impossible because the same are divided as far as their priority roles are concerned.
Mapalala says some are CCM parties, while others are brief cash entities, and yet some stand in elections in order to have a stake in the national cake—it is an income business. Of the three reasons Mapalala would prefer the last option to the rest.
National Reconstruction Alliance (NRA) stands for unity of any kind, and with any party within the opposition.
It is because of this that it finds itself on forked roads between supporting CUF, picking own candidate and supporting the nine parties’ initiative under Umoja.
Augustine Mrema of Tanzania Labour Party has been very particular about unity. He would prefer one that brings the leading political parties including CCM and not one for the opposition.
It could be because of this that his party showed presence when the Tanzania Centre for Democracy bringing together five leading parties in the country was formed this week.
“Alliance of the opposition in Tanzania is unworkable. The voting patern in both 1995 and 2000 has shown that even if all the opposition parties were to come together, they would not succeed to topple over CCM,” Mrema who is standing for the presidential bid for the third time said in an interview in March this year.
John Momose Cheyo looks to be the opposite of Mrema. He would like to mix with the opposition, but at the same time, with the ruling party whenever there are matters of national concern at stake.
CUF is another party, which has been very selective in the manner it cooperates with other parties.
Initially it had an alliance with UDP followed by another with Chadema. However, events in Zanzibar leading to the Kura za Maruhani and NCCR-Mageuzi’s intervention in 2001 affected the way in which the former looks at cooperation.
Given all these trends, it seems that UPDP’s chairman, TADEA’s John Lifa Chipaka and NLD’s Emmanuel Makaidi remain the only leaders who still foster the idea of staging one candidate under Umoja, according to sources in the weakling alliance.
Sources say they been pressurising other parties to convene a meeting and come up with decisive steps. However, with time being against them, there is no possibility that there are any other parties that are likely to buy their idea.
Like it was the case in 1995 and 2000, this time opposition parties seem unlikely to make a big gain against the ruling party.
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