In My Book of Things, the title to the leading front-page report of The Citizen on December 15 this year takes the cake! ‘Local elections a farce,’ simply read the headline; but it told us so much in so few words what’s happening to ‘Tanzanian democracy’ in general – and elections specifically!
Conducted on December 14, 2014, ‘the local government elections were marred by irregularities in many parts of the country, leading to postponement of the exercise in some areas,’ the paper reported, attributing that partly to ‘lack or shortage of voting materials, mixed-up names of candidates and voters...’
There were also other unpalatable reports, including punch-ups involving rival political party adherents, burning election materials, and interventions by security forces to disperse unruly folk dissatisfied in one way or another by what was going on (or not going on) regarding the elections. Why are Tanzanians trampling underfoot representative democracy, pray? Why, indeed? Could it be that the ghost of the Justice Francis Nyalali’s Commission findings on multipartysm in 1992 is finally coming to haunt Tanzanians? Among other findings, the Commission revealed that 80 per cent of the Tanzanians polled wanted the country to continue with its own invention of ‘mono-party democracy,’ while the remaining 20 per cent wanted a change to multi-party politics.
That stark reality notwithstanding, however, the clearly weak government of President Ally-Hassan ‘Ruxa’ Mwinyi blinked first (so to speak), wilting under the political stare of the founder of Tanzanian nationalism, immediate-past President Julius Nyerere.Contrary to the Nyalali Commission’s findings of the reality on the ground, the Mwinyi Administration reintroduced multipartysm beginning with the 1995 elections!
Although that decision was widely applauded, what with one thing leading to another, multipartysm hasn’t worked that well in and for Tanzania. In due course, four-and-a-half elections down the road, the electoral processes – which are crucial for a bona fide, functional representative democracy in a multi-party crucible – have been marred beyond our ken.
This is arguably done by those already in power (the ruling party of the Revolution, CCM, and its government) who aren’t able, willing, ready and prepared to relinquish power via the ballot box! That being the case – and Tanzanians being a peace-loving lot – rather than take up arms, they succumb to the forces of apathy and resort to refraining from registering to vote... Or, if they register, they don’t turn up on polling day to cast a vote – arguably believing that their vote’ll be doctored and otherwise manipulated to ‘donate victory ‘ to those already in power, and seek to perpetuate themselves therein. That’s why voter registration and turn-out have being falling steadily over the years. In the 1995 elections, there were 8,929,969 registered voters, 6,846,681 of whom turned out to vote (76.7 per cent). By contrast, only 7,995,925 voters turned out on polling day for the 2010 elections: a mere 39.71 per cent of the 20,137,303 voters registered!
One-half of the firth multi-party election – local government elections – was staged December 14, 2014, in which only 42 per cent of the projected 18,716,281 voters registered for the farce! What’ll happen to the 2015 elections, pray? Why the voter apathy galore? I ask you... Cheers!
