With Wire Reports — In a somber mood, Tanzania’s Vice President Samia Suluhu Hassan on Friday was sworn in as the East African country’s first female president after the sudden death of late President John Magufuli.
In her first public address as president, the 61-year-old leader announced 21 days of mourning for her former boss, Magufuli.
Suluhu Hassan also announced public holidays between March 22 and on March 25, the day the late president will be buried.
“I, Samia Suluhu Hassan, promise to be honest and obey and protect the constitution of Tanzania,” Hassan said while taking her oath office at a ceremony in the capital, Dar es Salaam.
“It 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 aspired to. It’s not a good day for me to talk to you because I have a wound in my heart,” said Hassan.
“Today I have taken an oath different from the rest that I have taken in my career. Those were taken in happiness. Today I took the highest oath of office in mourning,” she said after being sworn in on Friday.
Hassan’s leadership style is seen as a potential contrast from former President John Magufuli.
According to Tanzania’s constitution, the vice president serves out the remainder of the term of a president who dies in office. Magufuli, who was first elected in 2015, secured a second five-year term in polls in October last year.
The constitution also states that after consultation with their party, the new president will propose a deputy, the choice to be confirmed by the votes of no fewer than 50 per cent of the National Assembly.
A woman of first, Suluhu Samia became Tanzania’s first female vice-President following the 2015 General election, after being elected on the CCM ticket along with president John Magufuli.
Suluhu and Magufuli were re-elected to a second term in 2020.
Before her tenure as Vice-president she had served as the Member of Parliament from 2010 to 2015, and was also the Minister of State for Union Affairs in the Vice-President’s office from 2010 to 2015.
Hassan ascended to the presidency after President Magufuli’s death due to heart disease was announced on Wednesday, more than two weeks after he was last seen in public.
Earlier The New Diplomat had reported that Magufuli had not been seen in public since 27 February and rumours swirled online that he was sick and possibly incapacitated from illness.
A Kenyan newspaper had reported on 10 March 2021 that “an African leader” was being treated for COVID-19 at a hospital in Nairobi, leading to speculation that it could be President Magufuli.
Tanzania’s opposition politician Tundu Lissu, while citing unnamed sources but without providing evidence, said that he had heard that it was Magufuli who had contracted COVID-19 and was hospitalised.
However, while announcing Magufuli’s death, the country’s Vice-president, Samia Suluhu did not specify whether the late President had died of Covid-19, but said that he had suffered from chronic atrial fibrillation for more than a decade.
