Shall we be good men and women

Yona F. Maro · 2009-02-01T17:43:50+00:00

Imagine for a second you notice that a pimple on your back is getting bigger and harder. You do nothing about it. Five days later it is a full grown boil painful and irritating, and it's still growing. You could wait for it to burst or go see a doctor and have it surgically removed but the truth is now you have got to do something about it, whereas if you had acted prudently and proactively this problem would not exist, true? That is the story of the politics of our nation. It has been a boil festering on our backs for some 45 years. Confused by tribalism, lost in a web of endemic corruption and hostage to the abuse of law and the legal process. Unfortunately the will of the majority exercised through suffrage has been unable to change the tide, not because democracy is flawed but because the choices for change are poor, the process is staked against the voter and those at the helm just won't let go, not because the feel they are doing a sterling job but because they feel it is their right and only their right to do the job they have assigned themselves. The vast majority of Tanzanian's elite and upper middle class are politically apathetic. Comfortable in their positions, yet deeply democratic and anti-tribal. They inter-marry. Their closest friends are not from their own tribe. They want nothing better than to work hard and live a better life in this time and in the times of their children. As we sit today that future is under threat. The rest of Tanzania is not as homogeneous and prosperous as we are, the rest of Tanzania does not see things the way we do and one day the rest of Tanzania will turn against all of Tanzania. I ask you my brothers and sister. Shall we be good men and women? Shall we a people with our whole lives ahead of us take on the challenge to write laws that are equitable and just and that place the faith of the nation in institutions and not men and women, but that men and women shall be the custodians of and jealously guard with their lives and dignity and that will remain in force for one thousand years and more? Shall we stand up and end the four decades of electoral fraud, by writing new election laws that protect and promote the ballot as our forum for dispute resolution? Shall we stand and make election violence a thing of the past by monitoring candidates more closely, writing better laws to deal with election infractions and remove bribery from the campaign process? Shall we deal with the question of ethnicity making the smallest tribe most secure and mandating that the largest have no unfair share at the election table and in the distribution of resources? Shall we agree that the hands of the chief executive and any official who exercises executive authority be checked in making appointments from his or her tribe at all levels of government? Shall we agree that resources have been for to long allocated in a skewed manner and that we shall reverse that by allocating resources in a more equitable and sensitive manner? Shall we agree that representation at elections has not been fair to the people and create a more equitable system of representation? Shall we agree that we shall use the vast resources of the state to spur growth and roll back the ugly hand of poverty that envelopes our nation? Shall we agree that the process of developing the nation budget is unfair inequitable and moribund and agree to amend it? Shall we agree that we must create a system of universal healthcare and universal education for our nation? Shall we agree unequivocally the instruments of law and order have for to long been instrument of oppression in the hands of those in power and that we resolve to make them instruments of security in the hands of the weakest and the poorest? Shall we resolve that we shall be the beacon of light, the bastion of hope for the new generation and that we a new generation of Tanzanian's shall for once take up that century old military call to be ` a few good men and women' and shepard our nation to a new dawn? Shall we?

Thread starter Yona F. Maro
Start date Feb 1, 2009

Yona F. Maro

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