Tanzanian Prime Minister Edward Lowassa said Thursday that he had handed in his letter of resignation to President Jakaya Kikwete. “I wrote to the President to ask him to relieve me of my duties as I was cited in that scandal,” he said at a parliamentary session broadcast live on television. The Prime Minister has been named in a corruption scandal about a power supply contract signed between the Tanzanian government and the US company Richmond. Lowassa and other senior government officials reportedly supported the US company when the tender was issued. However, the PM has said he is innocent, blaming the investigators for not questioning him. “Their report undermined my credibility,” he told the Parliament, which immediately suspended its session pending the decision of President Kikwete. Under the Tanzanian constitution, the government will be dissolved if President Kikwete accepts the resignation. Last month, President Kikwete had sacked the governor of the Tanzanian Central Bank, following an audit which found malpractices in the payment of the country’s foreign debt.
