NEC opens doors to Bunge aspirants

Dar es Salaam. The National Electoral Commission (NEC) has opened doors to parliamentary and civic candidates as political parties move on with preparations.

According to the electoral monitor’s schedule issued last month, the candidates will start picking up nomination forms from today to August 25 before the campaigns start.

Tanzanians will elect the president, members of Parliament and ward councillors during the General Election scheduled for October 28.

The main opposition party Chadema has already nominated 163 candidates for Tanzania Mainland with 51 more constituencies pending.

Chadema’s deputy secretary general for Tanzania Mainland, Mr Benson Kigaila, said the party was still working to nominate the remaining candidates.

However, The Citizen has reliably learnt that the primaries would be repeated in a number of constituencies due to irregularities and objections raised by some aspirants, while the party would not field candidates in several other constituencies in favour of the Alliance for Change and Transparency (ACT-Wazalendo).

The two parties are in talks over a possible cooperation but they said would give details of the negotiations before the campaigns start on August 26.

Mr Kigaila added that the remaining candidates would hopefully be released up today.

Yesterday, Chadema in Zanzibar also nominated its candidates in the islands after internal selections.

The head of party’s organization and election department in Zanzibar, Mr Kado Salmin Mwalimu, said: “Almost all constituencies are covered with our party’s candidates. Only few have remained (without showing numbers) until the central committee nominates them in future,” he said.

Zanzibar has a total of 50 constituencies.

The Civic United Front (CUF) has released the list of 34 women candidates, including former Kaliua MP Magdalena Sakaya and six other former lawmakers (special seats).

CUF has not yet released names of male candidates until the publication time. The ruling CCM has not yet completed the nomination process for its candidates.

After the primary elections, the party is going through internal vetting process before the central committee selects three names from each constituency for the national executive council to vote.

The party has already conducted its district and regional committee meetings soon after the primaries to grade its candidates before other procedures. The party’s regional political committee meetings were conducted on August 4 and 5, 2020 while the sessions of the district political committees were held on August 1 and 2.

The party’s secretary for ideology and publicity, Mr Humphrey Polepole, said last week that the recommended candidates will be screened at the NEC meetings before being announced.

He however, did not mention the date of the NEC meeting.

The ACT-Wazalendo party is also yet to nominate the parliamentary candidates.

It conducted primaries but now the party is waiting for the national committee to approve them.

as party’s flag-bearer during the general election.

Yesterday, ACT-Wazalendo chairman and Zanzibar presidential candidate, Maalim Seif Sharif Hamad said he will not cooperate with corrupt people.

“We are going to recite the names and the election process. We will remove the names of all candidates who corrupted the voters during primary elections,” he noted yesterday as he visited Pemba.