|
Parties recycle ideologies-Tendwa
2006-12-26 10:22:31
By Patrick Kisembo
The Registrar of Political Parties, John Tendwa, has said that the country’s political parties, including the ruling CCM, have been unable to invent new policies and ideologies.
According to Tendwa, there has never been a new policy or ideology since the era of the Tanganyika African National Union (Tanu)—the party that led the country to uhuru in 1961. He said all parties had similar policies but only differed in priorities.
He said for example, each party advocated more education or health facilities. While one party demanded free education or health services, another advocated cost sharing.
’’I see nothing new...policies are still the same. It is as if we are still in the single party era,’’ said the registrar during an exclusive interview with The Guardian.
He said that even after more than a decade had elapsed since multi-party democracy was incepted; the parties were still duplicating old policies by focusing on priorities for development but not coming up with new ideas.
’’There is recycling of policies. You can see that what was TANU and now CCM are almost the same. No party has developed a new ideology,’’ he said.
However, the registrar gave some credit to the opposition Chadema, whose policy on guiding the country’s development under a provincial government system singled it out from others.
Conversely, he urged: ’’The party needs to sell itself effectively.’’
Tendwa said that in essence, policy and ideology should change over time to reflect the ever changing world, whether socially, politically and economically.
’’There is always transformation of economic development which goes along with global changes. As you can see, Russia and other Western European countries are no longer communist nations,” said Tendwa.
Tendwa said: ’’The situation of the country under the multi-party system is difficult. We have for instance, CCM. What ideology does it hold? Ujamaa and Self Reliance died long ago, although it would be unfair for me to speak on their behalf.”
He said the nation needed fresh
|
