Make 2020 national polls democratic, memorable
Tanzania conducted ‘local’ (government) elections on November 24, 2019, and is scheduled to conduct ‘national’ elections in October.
‘Local’ polls seek to elect into office people’s representatives in 4,264 Street (metropolitan) governments, 12,319 Village governments and 64,384 Hamlet governments on the Mainland.
On the other hand, the national polls elect into office the State President and members of the Union National Assembly.
Electoral candidates must be sponsored by political parties which are permanently registered by the government through the Political Parties Registrar. In other words, no independent candidates are allowed to stand for election. Also, candidates must be cleared to stand for election by the National Electoral Commission, and can only be polled for by duly registered voters.
Last year’s local elections were more than tinged with controversies. For one, the elections were boycotted by all major political opposition parties, resulting in what can only be described tongue-in-cheek as a ‘landslide victory’ for the veteran ruling Party of the Revolution (‘Chama cha Mapinduzi:’ CCM).
Reasons for the boycott can be summed up as general dissatisfaction by the political opposition with the manner and style in which the entire electoral processes were conducted.
For example, the elections were supervised by the minister responsible for Local Government, instead of the National Electoral Commission as the political opposition parties wanted.
Avoid last year’s election mistakes in the 2020 elections
The opposition argued that, as a minister of the government of the ruling political party CCM, the Local Government minister was already an interested party who was partisan in the elections. As such, he couldn’t do justice to the exercise – especially where and when his avowed party was doing badly at the polls.
Secondly, the political opposition complained that the guidelines for the local elections “didn’t take into account independent stakeholder views” and, therefore, did not guarantee room for free and fair elections... Nor were the guidelines “deliberated upon or vetted by the relevant Parliamentary Committee...”
As noted in these pages on September 5, 2019, the deputy minister for Regional Administration and Local Government, Mr Mwita Waitara, conceded that the National Electoral Commission “has no mandate under the Constitution” to supervise local elections – and nor can the National Voters Register be used in local elections!
All in all, the 2019 local elections were considered by analysts as being undemocratic, unfree, unfair and unrepresentative – a position that was also taken by rights activists and the country’s development partners, both bilateral and multilateral.
Critics already express similar misgivings regarding next October’s national elections.
In the light of that, President John Magufuli on Tuesday took the opportunity of this year’s ‘Sherry Party’ for foreign envoys stationed in the country to assure them – and the world – that the 2020 national elections would be ‘free and fair.’
However, that assurance has received mixed responses – as we reported in these pages on Thursday. The government must drastically overhaul the entire electoral system – and act on the recommendations of rights activists and independent election observers. Otherwise, sceptics say, the October 2020 national elections will be just as undemocratic and farcical as were last year’s local elections.
