DAR ES SALAAM— Tanzania has a new Speaker of Parliament in the person of 46-year-old Tulia Ackson.

The new Speaker has served as deputy to immediate past Job Ndugai since 2015 and is widely expected to tow the line of President Samia Suluhu Hassan.

Samia forced the resignation of Ndugai last month after he publicly criticized government’s rising debt.

“I believe we have elected the right person who will lead the parliament in the right direction,” senior MP William Lukuvi who supervised the election said.

“She knows her boundaries as speaker and she knows there is a head of state who is Samia Suluhu Hassan,” he stressed.

Ackson’s election is expected to align power structures in the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party as it prepares for new elections due in 2025.

On the matter of Tanzania’s public debt over which the last Speaker resigned, debt levels according to the central bank stood at almost $28 billion in November 2021.

Ackson becomes the second woman in the country’s history to occupy the seat after Anne Makinda who served as Speaker between November 2010 and November 2015.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK