President Jakaya Kikwete is about to set out on a countrywide journey to bid Tanzanians farewell before departing from State House next November.
He will start by bidding goodbye to hundreds of Arusha residents at a public rally to be held in the city next Wednesday afternoon.
Official reports from the Tanzania Information Services (Maelezo) here said President Kikwete had decided to start with Arusha in his farewell bidding journey because the region starts with the letter ‘A’ and apparently he wants to visit the regions in alphabetical order.
The head of State is expected to land in Arusha early on Wednesday morning and proceed to a place known as Laki-Laki, on the outskirts of the city, where he will lay a foundation for construction of the proposed United Nations Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (MICT).
The Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals was established by UN Security Council Resolution 1966 (2010) and is supposed to complete the remaining work of the Arusha-based International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) after the completion of their respective mandates.
The MICT has two branches – the one in Tanzania is to be built at Laki-Laki area of Kisongo in Arusha, and the other one has been set up in The Hague, The Netherlands.
After laying the foundation stone for MICT, President Kikwete will later address a public gathering at Sheikh Amri Abeid Stadium where hundreds of Arusha city residents and those from surrounding districts will converge for a farewell to their president.
Soon after he became president in November 2005, Mr Kikwete held the first official public rally in Arusha in February 2006, where he thanked the local residents for their votes.
And now, nine years and five months later he will be bidding them farewell at the same venue. Being the month of Ramadan season, the president will later on join local regional and district leaders, as well as the Muslim faithful, in breaking the fast in an Iftar dinner to be served at Mount Meru Hotel on Wednesday evening.
This will wind up his farewellbidding leg for Arusha as he would be departing from the city on Thursday morning.
Tanzania Daily
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