Makamba tears into Lowassa, says he’s not fit to be president

Morogoro. Former CCM secretary-general Yusuf Makamba has claimed that Chadema presidential candidate Edward Lowassa is corrupt and not fit to be president of Tanzania.

Addressing a CCM rally in Morogoro Municipality yesterday, Mr Makamba who has served as regional commissioner in Benjamin Mkapa’s administration said the ruling party was right in rejecting Mr Lowassa because he has consistently failed to explain the source of his wealth.

“In 1995 Mr Lowassa was summoned at the National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting and asked to say where and how he acquired his wealth, but he could not offer any credible explanation,” said Mr Mkamba, whose son, January, also picked up presidential nomination forms. He said Mr Lowassa has been harbouring thoughts of defecting to Chadema since 1995. “He sent to me a note asking for advice and I told him to remain within CCM,” Makamba told supporters at the Morogoro’s Jamhuri Stadium.

For his part, the CCM presidential candidate, Dr John Magufuli, yesterday said he was the candidate that will bring true change in the country and urged Morogoro residents to vote for him.

Speaking at the launch of the ruling party’s campaigns in the region, the Works minister, said he knows people want change and that he was the only candidate in the October 25 polls who is capable of achieving that.

“I know Tanzanians want change. I also want change. But change, if it is to bring development must be meaningful. If the bed has bugs do you burn the bed? No; you kill the bugs and continue sleeping,” Dr Magufuli said.

He cautioned Tanzanians against going for rushed change, referring to he now ravaged Libya. He said he once visited Libya with the then Foreign Affairs minister Jakaya Kikwete and found a beautiful country in which the jobless were paid.

“But groups of armed men, in the name of change, launched military campaigns that ended with the death of Muammar Gaddafi. Today Libya is like hell and its residents find it better to die in the Mediterranean Sea while cscaping to Europe,” Dr Magufuli noted.

He repeated his pledge to make the first 11 years of schooling fees-free, providing every village with Sh50 million as capital for youth and women projects as well as reducing the price of construction materials. He also said he will discipline the civil servants, fight corruption and repossess idle land.

“How is it possible that when patients go to hospital they are told to go and buy medicine in nearby pharmacies? Somebody must be sleeping on his job,” he noted.

“The corrupt cause a lot of suffering to the people. I will deal with them. I know the corrupt will not vote for me but their days are numbered,” said Dr Magufuli.

“I will increase workers’ salaries but will not tolerate the lazy who sign in at 8am and desert their workplace three hours later. If civil servants do not work hard it is poor Tanzanians who suffer the most,” he said.

He will use the Land Acts No 4 and No 5 to take over and redistribute all idle land in the country, he noted: “Owners of idle farms their days are numbered. They better start tilling the land because by October 25 the process will start to repossess the land,” he said. He promised Morogoro residents water availability to reach 95 per cent of the people .