DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania (AP) – Samia Suluhu Hassan made history on Friday when she was sworn in as Tanzania’s first president after the death of her controversial predecessor, John Magufuli, who denied that COVID-19 is a problem in the country. from East Africa.
Wearing a hijab and raising a Qur’an with his right hand, Hassan, 61, took the oath of office at the State House, the government offices in Dar es Salaam, the country’s largest city.
The inauguration was attended by cabinet members Ali Hassan Mwinyi and Jakaya Kikwete. Former heads of state were among the few people in the room who wore face masks to protect against COVID-19.
Hassan succeeds Magufuli, who had not been seen in public for more than two weeks before his switch to state television was announced late Wednesday. Magufuli denied that COVID-19 was a problem in Tanzania, saying that national prayer had eradicated the disease from the country. But Magufuli admitted a few weeks before his death that the virus was a danger.
A major test of Hassan’s new presidency will be how he copes with the pandemic. Under Magufuli, Tanzania, one of Africa’s most populous countries with 60 million people, has made no effort to obtain vaccines or promote the use of masks and social distance to fight the virus. This policy of ignoring the disease endangers neighboring countries, warn African health officials.
Although Hassan announced that Magufuli died of heart failure, exiled opposition leader Tundu Lissu says the president died of COVID-19, citing informed medical sources in Dar es Salaam.
“The immediate job, the immediate decision he has to make and he doesn’t have much time for that, is what will he do with COVID-19?” Lissu told the Associated Press in his place of exile in Belgium.
“President Magufuli defied the world, defied science, defied common sense in his approach to COVID-19 and eventually overthrew it,” Lissu said.
“President Samia Saluhu Hassan must decide very soon whether to change course or continue with the same disastrous approach to COVID-19 that her predecessor took,” the opposition leader said.
Hassan must also decide how to approach Magufuli’s legacy, including whether to continue his policies that have led Tanzania from a relatively tolerant democracy to a repressive state, Lissu said, wondering if he would be able to restore political freedoms. and the country’s democracy.
Lissu was exiled in 2017 after being shot 16 times. The attack came shortly after Magufuli said those who opposed his economic reforms deserved to die. Lissu returned to Tanzania to challenge Magufuli in the 2020 elections. He lost to Magufuli in polls affected by violence and widespread allegations of vote rigging. Lissu returned to exile, saying that his life was in danger.
Speaking at its inauguration, Hassan gave few indications that he intends to change the course at Magufuli.
“It’s not a good day for me to talk to you, because I have a wound in my heart,” Hassan said, speaking Kis Swahili. “Today I took an oath different from the rest I took in my career. These were taken happily. Today I took the highest oath in mourning, “she said.
She said Magufuli, “who always liked teaching,” had prepared her for the next task. “Nothing will go wrong,” she said, urging the unit.
“This is the time to stay together and connect. It’s time to bury our differences, show love and look confident with confidence, “she said. “This is not the time to point fingers at each other, but to hold hands and move forward to build the new Tanzania that President Magufuli aspires to.”
Hassan will complete Magufuli’s second term, which began in October. She had a meteoric rise in politics in a male-dominated field. Both Tanzania and the East African region are slowly emerging from patriarchy.
After Magufuli elected her as a co-worker in 2015, Hassan became Tanzania’s first female vice president. She was the second woman to become vice president in the region, after the Naigaga Wandira Specio in Uganda, which served from 1994 to 2003.
Born in Zanzibar, the semi-autonomous archipelago of Tanzania, in 1960, Hassan attended primary and secondary school at a time when very few girls in Tanzania were educated because their parents believed that a woman’s place was that of his wife and house.
After graduating from high school in 1977, Hassan studied statistics and began working for the government in the Ministry of Planning and Development. She worked on a World Food Program project in Tanzania in 1992 and then attended the University of Manchester in London to pursue a postgraduate degree in economics. In 2005, he obtained a master’s degree in community economic development through a joint program between the Open University of Tanzania and Southern New Hampshire University in the USA.
Hassan entered politics in 2000, when he became a member of the Zanzibar House of Representatives. In 2010, she won the Makunduchi parliamentary seat with over 80% of the vote. She was appointed cabinet minister in 2014 and became vice-president of the Constituent Assembly which drafted a new constitution for Tanzania, a role in which she earned respect for skillfully addressing several challenges.
As president, Hassan’s first task will be to unite the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi party behind it, said Ed Hobey-Hamsher, a senior African analyst at research firm Verisk Maplecroft. The party has been in power since Tanzania’s independence.
As a Muslim woman in Zanzibar, Hassan may have difficulty gaining the support of Christians on the party’s mainland, he said, warning that some entrenched leaders could develop “obstructionist strategies” against her. He said it was likely that Hassan would begin his rule by maintaining the status quo and not engaging in a significant reshuffle of the Cabinet.
Hassan is the second woman in East Africa to serve as head of state. Sylvia Kiningi of Burundi served as interim president of that small landlocked country for almost four months until February 1994.
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Odula contributed from Nakuru, Kenya. AP journalist Bishr Eltouni from Tienen, Belgium, contributed.