High Court deals blow to Wassira

Musoma. In a major setback to prominent CCM politician Stephen Wassira’s bid to save his troubled political career, the High Court’s Mwanza Division yesterday declared Ms Ester Bulaya the legitimate Member of Parliament for Bunda Urban Constituency after throwing away a petition filed by the embattled former cabinet minister. Delivering his judgment, Judge Noel Chocha said that evidence submitted before the court by Ms Bulaya’s defence team and the Attorney General had satisfied the court that Ms Bulaya won the election free and fair.

On the other hand, there was no convincing evidence from the litigants to show discrepancies that could merit overturning the results of the election conducted on October 25, last year.

He said it was amazing that there were some politicians who claimed that the election was not free and fair because evidence tendered before the court established that no voter experienced any form of hindrance in any of the voting processes.

“A fair and free election is the process in which political systems allow and guarantee voters that are eligible the opportunity to vote without any barrier or obstacle.

“During this session, I did not hear or witness anywhere where voters were denied their right to vote; instead they participated fully. The problem started during the tallying of votes, and this shows that voters were not denied their rights, instead some people are fighting for their own benefit and not wananchi’s,” he said.

The judge noted that the current laws and regulations were appropriate but the problem was selfishness by some politicians.

He said that before reaching the decision he also took into consideration different factors for the betterment of the residents of Bunda Urban, and Tanzanians in general.

If there was proof on the claims he would not have hesitated to nullify the results.

He said that apart from weak evidence, he also decided to not nullify the results because the decision would cost not only residents of Bunda Urban but all Tanzanians as government would have to spend a lot of money to conduct a by-election.

Nullifying the results would also render Bunda Urban people without a representative in the law making organ.

“But the main factor is that there is no strong evidence that can convince the court to nullify the election results, and as you can see the previous representatives did not help develop the constituency,” he said

Judge Chocha said that not every discrepancy registered during the election was strong enough to merit nullification of the results.

However, he said that the returning officer of Bunda Urban constituency, Ms Lucy Msoffe, showed a high degree of carelessness after filling form number 24b with wrong figures of registered voters even after she was notified of the mistake.

He noted, however, that the mistake did not affect election results as she was using the report from form number 21b from all 190 polling stations.

“Since there was no candidate who filled form number 14 to complain about the voting exercise, it was clear that the voting exercise did not have any problem. Information showed that Chama Cha Mapinduzi had agents in all 190 polling stations who informed the party or their candidates if there were questionable incidents,” he said.

Speaking on the number of polling stations that the petitioners alleged were added without due process, Judge Chocha ruled that the returning officer had no mandate to set the polling stations. He said it was the responsibility of the National Electoral Commission (NEC).

On allegations that the CCM candidate was not given an invitation letter to the tallying of the additional votes, Judge Chocha said that according to the document presented to the court, it was clear that the retuning officer wrote an invitation letter to all political parties and the secretary of CCM in Bunda District received the letter according to the dispatch book.

He said that the CCM secretary was required to appear in court to testify that he did not receive the said letter but petitioners failed to do so.

“Because there was no proof that CCM did not receive the invitation letter as it was claimed, the absence of the (party’s) candidate and its agents cannot stop the returning officer from declaring the winner,” he said.

On the thorny issue of number of voters that petitioners claimed was increased from 69,369 to 164,794, Judge Chocha said that the respondent told the court that 164,974 was the total number of registered voters within Bunda District, which has three constituencies namely Bunda, Bunda Urban and Mwibara.

“This argument would have been considered valid if the petitioners had brought to the court the permanent voters registration list from NEC to show the discrepancy in the number of voters,” he said.

Judge Chocha said there was a possibility that the petitioners failed to prove their arguments after failing to produce all 15 witnesses as they planned earlier. He noted that the petitioner brought to the court affidavits for 11 witnesses, but at the end of the day only three witnesses testified.

He said that even some of the petitioners themselves did not testify to prove their arguments. Only two out of the four petitioners testified and this, according to Judge Chocha, shows that they were not serious.

Four voters from Bunda Urban constituency filed the election petition at the High Court challenging the election results of the constituency in last year’s General Election. They are Magambo Masato, Matwiga Matwiga, Janes Ezekiel and Ascetic Malagila.