Prof Kennedy Gastorn, Tanzania’s permanent representative to the United Nations and ambassador to the United States, was removed on Tuesday over an unspecified corruption controversy.
The unexpected decision occurred many months after President Samia Suluhu Hassan sacked Foreign Minister Liberata Mulamula for alleged “overstepping” while on a tour of the United States for the UN General Assembly headed by Vice President Philip Mpango last year.
The decision on Tuesday empowers President Hassan to make strategic changes within her government as part of the domestic political preparations for defending her incumbency in the 2025 general election.
The President nominated Hussein Katanga, her closest assistant at State House, to replace Mr. Katanga as UN envoy in New York and ambassador in Washington DC, and promoted Moses Kusiluka from permanent secretary in the President’s Office to Chief Secretary.
Reshuffle
Mr. Kusiluka has been replaced by Diwani Athumani, Director General of Tanzania Intelligence and Security Service (TISS). Mr. Athumani’s former TISS deputy, Zanzibari Said Masoro, will now lead the spy agency.
The new appointments are effective immediately, according to a statement from presidential spokesperson Zuhura Yunus.
President Hassan announced the reforms in a televised address from State House Dar es Salaam on Tuesday night, citing broad concerns made in parliament in November about “funds mismanagement and abuse of power” in Tanzania’s foreign embassies.
She did not go into specifics about the claims levelled against the 46-year-old lawyer and diplomat, who has held both jobs since March 2020, but said his dismissal marked the “start of government measures to clean house and restore rightful standing in all of its diplomatic offices abroad.”
President Hassan looks to be solidifying her power base ahead of the 2025 elections, when she will run for the elective president for the first time.
Political analysts believe she would replace “detractors” with “loyalists” in a cabinet overhaul.
When some party heavyweights insisted that there were some “detractors” within the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party who were delaying the implementation of the 2020 election manifesto, the President herself hinted as much at a ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) National Congress in Dodoma last month.
She has stated her intention to seek for election by popular mandate in 2025, after being raised from the position of vice president by constitutional decree upon the death of President John Pombe Magufuli in March 2021.
According to Tanzania’s present constitution, President Hassan will have served more than two-thirds of what would have been Magufuli’s second term by October 2025, rendering her eligible to seek for only one full term of political office.
