Is the new party another Trojan horse or a bark looking for its dog?

There has always been a soap opera quality to the political goings-on in Tanzania, complete with bleeding heart defenders of this or that line of thought or action, and flip-flops fit to make you doubt your own sanity.

A few weeks ago, it was the hideous spectre of senior ministers and high ranking party officials trading insults with the abandon of street urchins, continued more recently in an embarrassing episode wherein one of the ministerial characters in the soap is laughed out of parliament with a Bill the legislators thought was a joke in bad taste.

Now the poor minister, licking her wounds and scratching her scars, says she was hard done by, and her usual suspect is, naturally, the Speaker, while the latter avers he would have thought the minister more serious than she has been. To be continued.

The other one comes in the shape of the mooted new party rumoured to be a splinter from the ruling party, CCM, and supposed to be the promised deliverer of Tanzanians from the yoke of CCM, Mwalimu Nyerere’s brainchild. (Remember, old man Julius himself prophesied that this would verily come to pass.)

First we hear a rumour of the birth of the new messiah and disgruntled politicos thrill to the idea.

Then the pace quickens as it’s announced that the party, whose name can now be revealed as CCJ (Chama cha Jamii), has sought “temporary registration” and will be trying to participate in the October elections.

The hallelujahs are mouthed, and the plot thickens as it is “reliably” hinted that the new party is to be led by a group of CCM bigwigs frustrated by President Jakaya Kikwete’s leadership and intent on giving him a run for his money, come October.

Names are bandied around, and they sound like a who’s who of the pantheon of service under Julius.

But then not one of those mentioned comes out to claim the applause, and all we get is a couple of names of complete unknowns as the intrepid little mice who dare bell the big fat cat.

The mystery deepens when the Registrar of Political Parties, empowered to verify the bona fides of all parties before registration, flips, flops and flips again: He first declares he has received the party’s request for registration, but warns it may not be ready for the October election.

Then he makes the stunning remark that there is no such thing as CCJ, it’s a hoax and he just wonders how grown adults can expend time and energy discussing a ghost organisation existing only in cloud cuckoo-land.

After which, we are told he has refused to register the party…

Naturally for a town that loves a good rumour, the tongues are wagging and theories are all of the conspiracy type.

One is that there is indeed a group of CCM heavyweights who believe the time has come for them to do the needful as their patriotic duty, even if they do not field a candidate against Kikwete this October, their sights trained on the horizon.

Others will swear that the whole thing is indeed a sham, as the registrar has claimed, designed by the intelligence services to kill off any plans that anyone may have to break away from CCM.