Tanzania’s new president, Samia Suluhu Hassan, said the country should unite and avoid pointing fingers after the death of John Magufuli, his skeptical predecessor Covid-19.
Wearing a red hijab, she took her oath of office in the Quran at a ceremony at the State House in the commercial capital of the East African country, Dar es Salaam. She is the first female head of state in the country of 58 million.
Hassan, vice president since 2015, gave a brief and gloomy speech after his oath, addressing a crowd of men that included two former presidents and uniformed police.
“This is the time to bury our differences and be one as a nation,” she said. “This is not the time to point fingers, but it is time to hold hands and move on together.”
The comments seemed intended to dispel the climate of uncertainty that developed after Magufuli, criticized by opponents as a divisive and authoritarian figure, disappeared from public view for 18 days before his death was announced.
His absence from public life drew speculation that he was seriously ill with Covid-19. Magufuli died of heart disease, Hassan said in announcing his death on Wednesday.
Among the first tasks faced by Hassan, 61, will be the decision to purchase vaccines from Covid. Under its predecessor, the government said it would not obtain any vaccines until the country’s experts themselves reviewed them.
It will also face the task of curing a polarized country during the Magufuli years, analysts said, and building its own political base to govern effectively.
Described as a soft-spoken consensus builder, Hassan will also be the first president of the country born in Zanzibar, the archipelago that is part of the Union of the Republic of Tanzania.
His leadership style is seen as a potential contrast to Magufuli, a fierce populist who earned the nickname “Bulldozer” for forcing policies and who drew criticism for his intolerance of dissent, which his government denied.
She praised the late leader in her comments: “He taught me a lot, he was my mentor and he prepared me enough”.
Human rights groups say Magufuli’s six-year government has been hampered by arbitrary arrests, suspension of critical television and radio stations, blocking social networks and other abuses.
New York-based Human Rights Watch said that Tanzania had a chance to revive its democracy and reverse the country’s “downward trajectory of human rights” under Magufuli.
DaMina Advisors, a political risk advisory firm, predicted that the new president would likely publicly change Covid’s denial policy from its predecessor and its generally negative attitudes toward foreign investors.