Opposition party ACT Wazalendo raises suspicion over polls registration figures

Dar es Salaam. Opposition party ACT-Wazalendo has questioned government’s figures on the number of people who have registered so far for local government elections, calling them dubious.

This has emerged after government, today October 15, released a report showing that more than 15.2 million people have been registered countrywide since the exercise began on October 7.

The government seeks to register a total of 22.9 million people in an exercise that is set to end on October 17.

 Local government minister Selemani Jafo while briefing reporters in Dar es Salaam said that the exercise had succeeded by 68 per cent so far.

But questioning the figures on Twitter, ACT-Wazalendo’s chairman of strategy and compliance committee Mr Ismail Jussa hinted that the figures are hard to believe.

“When were these statistics of up until yesterday collated to the extent that [the government] was able to release them earlier today [October 15]?” asked Mr Jussa in his Twitter handle. 

“How come has the government been able to collect the figures within 12 hours from every all villages, wards and street in Tanzania? Tanzanians are not fools.”

 Speaking to reporters, Mr Jafo said that the regions of Dar es Salaam, Coast, Tanga, Mtwara, Lindi and Iringa had performed impressively well in the exercise. 

Mr Jafo said that Coast Region has registered a total of 473,639 (80 per cent), followed by Dar es Salaam, 2,064,820 (77 per cent), Tanga, 823,194 (75 per cent), Lindi, 353,649 (74 per cent) and Iringa, 381,134 (74 per cent). 

Earlier on Tuesday, ACT-Wazalendo’s chairman for campaigning and elections committee Mr Joran Bashange told reporters that the party’s countrywide investigation had uncovered numerous irregularities in the centres designated for voters’ registration.

 He named some of the irregularities to be the collection of registration books without being filled with the names of the registered and opposition parties were denied access to certain information.

“For example, in Msasani there are three centres which we visited on October 12. We observed that there was a new registration book while just the day before the existed book had only 300 names and left the spaces for 200 people unfilled.”

 Mr Bashange is calling on the authorities to amend the irregularities so that the exercise goes on smoothly.