Africa-Press – Tanzania. Nairobi.
Opposition Chadema Vice Chairman Tundu Lissu on Saturday said that he is ready and willing to return to Tanzania to work with President Samia Suluhu Hassan after his stay in exile in Belgium since last year’s election.
Mr Lissu,who was speaking during the launch of his new book on democracy in East Africa, said that he had already placed phone calls to the new Tanzanian leader, and asked for a meeting.
Speaking in Nairobi, the Tanzanian opposition leader – who lost last year’s Presidential election to the late President John Mangufuli – said that his focus, should he get a physical meeting with President Samia, would be on the expansion of the democratic space, which he termed worrying.
He said that for the new President to succeed, a change in the constitutional order, granting more freedom to opposing voices, with divergent opinions was key and important, a sacrifice he believed the new leadership can make, for all.
“I did place a call to President Suluhu two days after she was sworn and the call was picked by her personal assistant, whom I asked to inform the President that I would be happy to sit down with her and discuss the way forward for Tanzania, and how we can reform our country. But I am still waiting for a response.”
“Even our party leadership of Chadema, led by the chairman placed a request to the President, which was replied after a week, but we are still waiting for a response for a meeting,” he said.
In the book, whose launch was attended by former Kenya’s Chief Justice Willy Mutunga, leaders of the Chadema party and other delegates, Mr Lissu criticizes what he terms as the mushrooming dictatorial and imperial presidency in three states of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, which has stifled opposing voices.
“The present dispassionate history of our countries is that of the imperial presidency. Our presidents are the semblance of the pre-colonial monarchs that sought through many means, to retain and remain in power,” said Mr Lissu, who was shot multiple times in 2017 in Dodoma.
The book, titled Remaining in the Shadows: Parliament and Accountability in East Africa, is an indictment of the Presidential system of government.
