By Frank Kimboy
The Citizen Reporter

Dar es Salaam. The Tanganyika Law Society plans to go to court later this month to challenge Section 44 of the 1985 Election Act allowing a candidate to be declared winner on being unopposed.

According to the TLS president, Mr Francis Stolla, lawyers from the association were putting final touches to the petition before it is filed later this month.He said the association wanted Section 44 of the Election Act to be repealed since it denied voters their primary right of choosing their leaders.  

Section 44 of the election Act states: ‘Where only one candidate is nominated for an election in a constituency, such candidate shall be deemed to be elected and the commission shall, by notice in the Gazette, declare him/her to have been elected.’ Apart from denying voters their right to elect their leader the section also leaves some loopholes on corruption, Mr Stolla said.“We want Section to be repealed from the Act because it leaves loopholes which greedy people could exploit during elections,” he said.

Although Mr Stolla could not give the exact date when the petition would be lodged at the high court, he said TLS will make sure that the petition is filed before the end of this month. Various people, including Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda and the minister for Lands, Housing and Human Settlement Development, Professor Anna Tibaijuka, were unopposed in their parliamentary seats during the 2010 General Election.

Apart from the 1985 election Act, TLS will also challenge the provision contained in the Advocates Act which gives the Chief Justice power to register someone as an advocate.

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