In Tanzania, the arrest of opposition leader Freeman Mbowe stirred the political scene. Is President Samia Suluhu's sympathy capital crumbling?
Is this the end of the state of grace for Samia Suluhu Hassan, four months to the day after coming to power? An elected member of the chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party of the president sees in any case "a serious error" in what has just happened in Tanzania. The former deputy and leader of the opposition party Chadema, Freeman Aikaeli Mbowe, was arrested overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday. According to one of the party's activists, Maria Tsehai, the security forces would have broken down her door and arrested the opponent at 3 a.m. The arrest took place at a hotel in Mwanza town.
Mbowe's arrest comes just hours after a press conference the opponent held in Dar es Salaam calling for a new constitution. For Mbowe and his Chadema party, the current Tanzanian constitution is "xenophobic and totalitarian", as was the late, yet very popular president, John Magufuli.
President Samia Suluhu Hassan had however largely broken with the legacy of Magufuli. It pardoned several prisoners of conscience, including members of Chadema, and gave the press back some hitherto lost freedom. The new president could also boast an excellent diplomatic and economic record, in just a few months in office.
The opposition denounces a dictatorship
Mbowe represents, for his part, the Tanzanian socialist left. He was very critical of the health measures of former President John Magufuli. In this case, Chadema supporters boycotted traditional treatments and steam chambers that the state had installed under Magufuli to treat Tanzanians showing symptoms of Covid-19.
Since Freeman Mbowe's arrest, his party, friends and family have demanded clarification of the charges against the opponent. Mbowe and other members of his party, also arrested the same evening, planned to organize discussions on a possible constitutional revision. Some even called for the drafting of a new constitution.
Freeman Mbowe had, in a video, castigated the power: “We cannot continue with the old order. We have the right to meet, he said. If they want to arrest all the members of Chadema, let them expand the prisons because we are all ready to be arrested and we are not asking for release on bail ”. Chadema's candidate in the last presidential election in Tanzania, Tundu Lissu, appealed to Tanzania's international partners. According to him, the allies "should stop subsidizing the dictatorship of the CCM", thus alluding to a continuity between the policies of Magufuli and that of Samia Sulhu Hassan.
On the side of the ruling party, if some opposed the arrest of Mbowe, others support the president. They claim that the arrest of the opponent can be explained by the health context: the rally scheduled for Wednesday was to bring together between 200 and 300 people in the conference room of the hotel where Mbowe and his supporters were arrested.
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🔸The leader of Tanzania's main opposition party Chadema, Freeman Mbowe and other members were arrested ahead of a conference scheduled to demand constitutional reforms. pic.twitter.com/VDqGY4aOVI
- (Little) Think Tank (@L_ThinkTank) July 21, 2021