When the parliament is not in session, local news seems to slow down.

I guess I’ve gone and developed a taste for high-performance politics.

The overly dramatic clashes between Speaker Anna Makinda and the various hordes — the ones who hate her because she’s CCM, the ones who hate her because she’s a woman, and the ones who hate her because she’s memorised the rulebook and they haven’t — make for great partisan reporting.

So you can imagine, it can be a bit depressing to return to the hum-drum dailiness of garden-variety politricks.

But there is excitement to be had, in small doses, here and there.

I switched on the state broadcaster this Monday and watched President Kikwete at his most presidential in a very long time.

The podium was dripping with microphones and draped to within an inch of its life in Green, Yellow, Blue and Black cloth — in case Tanzanians were in any danger of forgetting the colours of the flag.

Jay Kay was opening a training seminar for his top management teams, flanked by rows upon rows of paunchy but dignified greyheads in suits of varying crispness.

When he first came to power with his New Everything plans, Jay Kay infamously took his ministers and a bunch of other key worthies to an upscale resort in Ngurdoto for a horribly expensive training seminar.

Because apparently after 20 years of slow disintegration, good governance can be taught in a matter of days.

The outcomes of that session were pretty hopeless. I wouldn’t say Jay Kay has had an exemplary first term, and I pretty much wrote off the fourth administration at the beginning of its second term.

Except that… well, there’s something a little different about this reissue of (horribly expensive) training seminar.

First of all, Jay Kay took the time to direct some mildly harsh words towards his ministers about the importance of performance.

While previously the president was content to humiliate incompetent minor civil servants in strategically insignificant places by firing them during public events, this was the first time I actually saw him talk about a sense of corporate responsibility and believed it.

The whole government is now in his crosshairs. Well, it’s about time.

Then Jay Kay reiterated his support of the free media by telling his management team that the government would have to learn how to live with and — when unavoidable — communicate through journalists.

Tossed them to the wolves without a shred of remorse, he did, and it was a delicious moment.

And thirdly, and most interestingly, Jay Kay used words like “effectiveness” and “efficiency” and “improvement” with admirable sincerity. But there weren’t any donors in sight! Did he actually mean those words for us garden-variety citizens? Hmmm.

I know that it is completely unfashionable to say anything complimentary about one’s own government these days but I’m going to risk it here.

It looks to me like The Establishment is trying to learn from its past mistakes.

We seem to be in transition to something… better. Just the other day the prime minister supported the opposition on a matter of separation of powers and checks and balances.

It was such an unprecedented departure from The Establishment’s regular attitude that it took everyone a few minutes to figure out what they had just witnessed: Given a choice between public interest and partisan interests, Pinda chose the public. Imagine that.

Yes, it is strange to rejoice in small shows of insubordination by your prime minister. And maybe it is too soon to herald the dawn of a Golden Age in Tanzania.

But taken cumulatively, these few incidents are pointing to a change in attitude that is more than welcome.

On Twitter the other day, a couple of Tanzanian Tweeps were revelling in our relatively recent freedom to speak our minds in public and in the media for better or for worse.

It took an enabling environment to get the government to understand that resisting (for the most part) the urge to censor is not the end of the world as they know it.

Tossing barbs at the massive target presented by The Establishment is an occupational imperative, but I confess to finding unrelenting cynicism tedious.

With what’s happening to our Ugandan counterparts in mind, I would say that this is a good time to reflect upon our functionalities and build on what freedoms we have managed to wrest from The Establishment’s sweaty grasp.

Yes, the Emperor is still naked as far as this columnist is concerned.

But when the naked Emperor manages to put his trousers on all by himself… well, at least give him a lollipop for finding the wardrobe, then encourage him to maybe look for his socks next.

Elsie Eyakuze is an independent consultant and blogger for The Mikocheni Report, http://mikochenireport.blogspot.com. E-mail: [email protected]