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Procession can`t bar Chenge from House
2008-04-21 10:39:33
By Angel Navuri
National Assembly Deputy Speaker Anne Makinda has said she knows next to nothing about plans by opposition legislators to demonstrate in Dodoma today.
The demonstration is said to be aimed at barring embattled Infrastructure Development minister Andrew John Chenge from attending the House sessions resuming this morning after the weekend recess.
Makinda said in a telephone interview with this paper on Friday that she had no information on the planned protest action.
She added that, in any case, they (opposition MPs behind the plans) had no powers to shut anyone else out of the House.
On Thursday four opposition parties - Civic United Front (CUF), Chama cha Maendeleo Demokrasia na Maendeleo (Chadema), Tanzania Labour Party and NCCR-Mageuzi – vowed to bar minister Chenge from being anywhere near the Parliament chamber today.
They said they wanted to make sure that the minister is shut out until investigations into allegations that he has a hefty 1.2bn/- in a suspicious overseas bank account are completed.
``Opposition parties have no powers to block him from getting into the House just on the strength of the said allegations,`` the deputy Speaker stated, adding: ``They can demonstrate if they have permission from the police but that should not be inside the House or around Parliament Building. But even then they definitely cannot block the minister or anyone else from getting into the House.``
She explained that Chenge and all other legislators have every right to attend and participate in House sessions until such time that they are no longer MPs.
CUF legislator Hamad Rashid Mohamed, Leader of the Official Opposition in the House, meanwhile said today`s demonstrations ``should also serve as a message to the government that it ought to take serious action against Chenge in connection with the suspicious foreign bank account``.
The opposition`s decision to demonstrate follows revelations by British investigators involved in a three-year inquiry over the controversial sale of a military radar to Tanzania that the minister has more than $1.0 million in a bank account in the UK.
Chenge has not denied having the account but has suggested that the reports about it are the work of malicious elements bent on besmirching him.
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