Ernest Mpinganjira
19 February 2006
Nairobi — Tanzania's ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) is in dilemma over whether to sack Inspector-General of Police Omar Mahita, or retain him and incur the wrath of crime-weary populace.
In the past two weeks, there have been attempts to hold the Government to account through calls to dismiss non-performers in the police. Top on the list is Mahita, who is fighting to cling onto the top perch of demoralised law-enforcement agency that is said to be teaming with criminals to spread mayhem.
At the centre of the drama is fear that showing the police boss the door would open a can of worms with Mahita spilling hitherto untold secrets of CCM's election strategies and funding.
In the past two weeks since Mahita threatened to banish the opposition from national politics, CCM has been at pains to distance itself from the IGP's comments, which the opposition and the ruling party agreed insinuated poll fraud in the form of the machinations the ruling party employs to scuttle opposition.
Embarrassed by the insinuation of the police force's complicity in election results fixing, senior CCM officials have attempted to force the police boss - at least in public - not to curry favour with President Jakaya Kikwete by issuing threats to opposition parties.
With Mahita's back to the wall over his wealth, there is now fear within the CCM government that he could retaliate and expose the ruling party.
Wary of being purged as new regime attempts to forge new alliances, Mahita threw all caution to the wind and told a recent meeting of top policemen in Dar es Salaam that opposition parties were behind runaway crime in the country.
As proof of his allegations, he produced two knives he said were part of a consignment opposition party supporters use to perpetuate criminal activities.
"I will make sure that CUF does not rule this country for a long as I'm still the police boss," Mahita vowed. The flipside of the utterance, analysts said, were meant to remind CCM of the favours he had done the party when it faced serious opposition in Zanzibar and major towns on the Mainland.
Mahita's utterances triggered a public spat with senior members of the government over the police force's role in election fraud and cover-ups of high-profile economic crimes. In parliament as in public the ruling party immediately came under pressure to distance itself from Mahita's sentiments by sacking him.
As public calls for Mahita's sacking intensified and the debate over his complicity in spiralling crime threatened to suck in CCM bigwigs, the Government leaked a report to the Press last week showing that the IGP is due for retirement in May, hence no need for his dismissal.
CUF, which held a public demonstration yesterday in to compel Kikwete to sack the police boss, scoffed at the leak as one calculated to buy Mahita's silence.
For nearly two months now, the police have been under pressure to fight crime in major towns, with senior police officers being singled out as members of criminal gangs that have been on the loose since the new government gave the shoot-to-kill orders in January.
Crime wave ratcheted up after Kikwete and Mwapachu, who have vowed to weed out the bad elements from the force to clamp down on economic crimes, indicted the police for incompetence.
Kikwete and Mwapachu have accused the police of culpability in bank heists and ordered a confidential dossier on senior police officers.
The highlight of the dossier is Mahita's properties that are strewn across Tanzania's 21 provinces, is estimated to run into billions of shillings.
Even more intriguing was that, as Mahita's verbal outburst took centre-stage most of last week, the public learnt that his office at the police headquarters in Dar es Salaam could not account for over Tsh3.64 billion ($3.1 million), according to a controller and auditor general's 2004/05 report presented to parliament on Tuesday.
The report coincided with Mahita's fight-back against accusations that he has been shielding criminal gangs and economic saboteurs from prosecution.
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