Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation minister Bernard Membe has expressed his government’s displeasure at the conduct of Canadian diplomat Jean Touchette whom allegedly spat on a traffic policeman and a journalist this week in Dar es Salaam.
The allegation is made in IPP Media’s The Guardian a media house with a propensity for allegations with Reginald Mengi (IPP Media’s CEO) recently accusing (without supporting evidence) various prominent businessmen in Tanzania, of acts of grand corruption. In the absence of proof, the allegations undoubtedly amounted to criminal libel vis-à-vis the Penal Code of Tanzania.
Membe stated the alleged act of the Canadian diplomat was the highest form of humiliation by a country propagating democracy, good governance and human rights. Let us examine the reality of this proclaimed ‘propagation’.
In a survey commissioned by the Kenyan Division of Transparency International (July 2009) the Tanzanian police were ranked the second most corrupt institution in East Africa with a 62.2%. Justice is bought and paid for in Tanzania. Public prosecutors openly tout their services to defendants able to afford a ‘not guilty’ judgement on the day of trial and the penal code is mostly ignored and seldom understood by the police. The police, particularly in the lower ranks know or care nothing of the penal code or the required procedures for arrest. Human rights are brutally denied on a daily basis resulting in people in prison for years for crimes they did not commit or know nothing about.
Whilst the conduct of the Canadian diplomat, if true, is utterly reprehensible lets get real!! Membe has made no comment about the conduct of the police in the Silverdale case!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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