Samia, beware the Faustian Compact dangling before you

There seems to be dissensions within the ruling party. The minister responsible for local government, who also happens to be President Samia Suluhu Hassan’s ’s son-in-law, was the one to announce the “results” that gave the ruling party a victory of a Ceasescuan 99.01 per cent of the votes counted.

At the same time reports continued to multiply of all manner of open infractions: Police carrying ballot boxes already marked for the ruling party; school children under the voting age being registered as voters; opposition party candidates being disqualified in hundreds of thousands for failing to fill in the forms while that difficulty miraculously did not seem to affect ruling-ptay candidates, as if these latter have gone through different schools and possess very different levels of literacy!

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In short, although in the past we have witnessed electoral rigging, this time we were being treated to the spectacle of rigging - which is an act of electoral dishonesty - working hand-in-glove with criminal illiteracy in the very science of rigging. Riggers may have the right to rig but they have no right to insult the intelligence of their people.

A dynamic young leader of in the opposition; Zitto Kabwe, who, to be fair, has tended to spare Samia in his attacks on ruling-party machinations, took his gloves off when addressing a political rally in the west ern town on: Lake Tanganyika. He called out Samia in person and laid the responsibility for this charade squarely at her feet.

Almost immediately after Zitto’s bare-knuckle speech, one of his lieutenants, about to enter Dar es Salaam off a bus from the lake, was abducted –another one again - taken on a blindfolded tour of the city and dumped at a Dar es Salaam beach, from where he had to be taken to hospital to receive treatment for severe torture.

The monster of abductions and torture is still in our midst at a time when we have no news of news about many people who have been recognized as desaparecidos – we might as well borrow the Latin American word – who have not been accounted for.

Now, this last week, one of the very few remaining voices of reason, rationality and restraint, Joseph Warioba — former Attorney-General, former Prime Minister and staunch member of CCM — weighed in on these issues, with caution to Samia to stop using security organs in the dirty circus of electoral cheating, which was clearly the case in these last local government “elections”, pointing out that the country was left with only one institution which has remained above political abuse, and that is the Tanzania People’s Defence Force (TPDF), with a warning to the president never to corrupt it in the way that Police and other security organisations have been compromised.

This is one man whose integrity has never been doubted, who keeps his voice level and chooses his words very cautiously, which serves the purpose of enabling even the deaf to hear.

But, even before hearing, is Samia listening? What I can be sure about is that she is hell-for-leather determined to be elected next year, but how much is she willing to throw overboard just to be elected?

Would she be just as dogged in her determination even if the results were that the country go to pieces and burn, or is there a cut-off point beyond which she will not tread?

In the past fictitious, fraudulent and phony “elections,” we have seen to what lengths Samia’s people are prepared togo to show Tanzanians that she and her people will rule over this country whether the people like it or not.

Read: Tanzanian court upholds mandate of president’s office to run civic polls

It is possible she does not know, or is it that she has been told to stay out of this and “her boys” will deliver the election next year, and no one ever made an omelette without breaking eggs?

I would humbly suggest that Samia take a step from where she stands right now and contemplate what she sees before her, and Jospeh Warioba’s warning will stand her in good stead is she heeds it.

There is no amount of power, glory, or wealth that can justify the breaking up, or the going up in flames of a country.

I am in no doubt that she is being told many different things, including that the people love her so much and that she can do anything she wants to do and the people will back her up and make her their president in 2025.

I want to tell her those who say those things are liars, and that they are leading her into a Faustian Compact whose finality is perdition.

Ulimwengu is now on YouTube via jeneralionline tv. E-mail: [email protected]