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which is crucial to the budget guidelines prepared by the government. The
PER has thus developed into a more or less permanent, low-key dialogue
between the government and local representatives of those donor agencies
that are most active in providing budget support.
It could be argued that this arrangement has led to increased donor responsibility
for the outcome of the budget process. However, the work is
carried out at the technical level and the results are fed into the ordinary
Tanzanian budget process. The Tanzanian ownership is therefore not diluted.
However, PER implies that the aid agencies involved are provided
with improved information regarding the budget process as such, and thereby
also its weaknesses. This increased transparency may be considered sensitive
by some interests on the Tanzanian side.
Still more contentious are, however, the issues related to the third wave
of conditions, those on governance, democracy and human rights. This realm
contains a lot of sensitive issues, bordering on the national sovereignty. The
attitude of the Tanzanian government during the presidential election in
Zimbabwe in February 2002 is a case in point. Here president Mkapa and
many of his ministers very strongly criticised the EU, UK and other countries
for involving themselves in internal Zimbabwean policy. This was interpreted
by some donors as a defence of the policy of president Mugabe
including the attacks on the commercial farmers and the violence and harassment
against the political opposition. The following period provided a
number of indications that not only election monitoring, but also other
governance issues were sensitive issues, when becoming public.
One of the more important contributions to this discussion came from
the former prime minister and respected judge Joseph Warioba in a paper
on good governance and its increasing role in the aid conditionality package
(Daily News, 22 March, 2002). Judge Warioba was chairman of the Commission
on Corruption, which produced a strong report a number of years
ago and he is very active in the struggle against corruption in the country. In
his paper he criticises the donors for using double standards when monitoring
elections in different countries. He argues that this double standard is
also used when aid giving countries demand a policy from the poor countries
that they themselves are not prepared to implement. Finally he warns
his Tanzanian countrymen about being too dependent on development assistance,
as that hampers the scope for an independent policy and strengthens
the dependency syndrome, that is already visible.
As a good dialogue has to be based on trust, factors eroding mutual trust
between the partners are also a threat to the dialogue. These factors may be
of different kinds. One consists of political decisions by the Government,
which are perceived by the donor community as incompatible with agreements
in force. One recent example is the decision to buy credit financed
radar equipment for air traffic control from the UK that was considered too
expensive and technologically sub-optimal. Some donors were concerned