Tanzania President Samia Suluhu Hassan, who is visiting the US, has come under intense pressure to change the country’s constitution ahead of the 2025 elections.
Back home, President Hassan has been grappling with calls from activists and opposition parties, led by Chadema and ACT-Wazalendo, demanding law changes before the polls in which she is set to defend her seat on the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) ticket.
The demand for constitutional reforms was among the messages that greeted Ms Hassan on Sunday when some Tanzanians living in the US confronted her, demanding a raft of changes in the governance of their country.
Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan. She is under intense pressure to change the country’s constitution ahead of the 2025 elections.
In March, she backed a proposal by a constitutional review task force that the supreme law be amended after the elections.
She also agreed with the idea of “gradual improvements”.
“After that, we will see if there is still a need for wholesale constitutional changes. Perhaps a complete rewrite won’t be necessary, only in some areas. And even if we do have to rewrite the whole document, most of the necessary amendment work will have already been done,” she said.
On April 14, task force secretary Sisty Nyahoza invited public views within 31 days on the nine areas analysed by the team, including the issue of whether Tanzania should write a new constitution.
The protesters also pushed for Tanzania to recognise dual citizenship for its nationals and expel illegal members of parliament, among other issues.
Other posters carried by the protesters showed pictures of missing journalist Azory Gwanda, and opposition leaders Freeman Mbowe and Tundu Lissu.
Gwanda, who worked with Mwananchi Communications Ltd, a subsidiary of the Nation Media Group in Tanzania, went missing without a trace on November 17, 2017.
Before his disappearance from his home in Kibiti, Pwani region, Gwanda, then 45, had written a series of articles on a string of murders of local government officials and police officers by unidentified assailants on motorcycles.
On Lissu, the protesters posed the question: “Who shot the vice-chairman of Chadema, mainland?”
“Many things happened in the past that President Samia should answer,” said one protester.
In response to the placards, President Hassan, who was addressing Tanzanians in the diaspora, said she had seen the messages.
“The good thing is that when I was coming here I found my ‘children’ lined up with their posters and T-shirts. I told them I have seen them. But it is their right to say we should listen to them,” she said amid applause.
“I have read their posters and T-shirts and their messages, so the political situation is fine and all these matters are being dealt with by the task force.”
In videos circulating on social media, protesters at the main entrance of Tanzania House in Washington, DC, raised their voices after seeing various government officials coming out of the embassy, including finance minister Mwigulu Nchemba and the former holder of that docket Saada Mkuya Salum.
The other officials who were part of President Hassan’s entourage included Ashatu Kijaji, the minister of investment, industry and trade, and Zuhura Yunus, the director of presidential communications. BY DAILY NATION