Registrar of Political Parties Judge Francis Mtungi shares views with the Legal and Human Rights Centre executive director, Dr Helen Kijo-Bisimba, in Dar es Salaam yesterday shortly after he launched the Observation Report on the 2015 General Election. PHOTO | ANTHONY SIAME
What you need to know:
Released by the Legal and Human Rights Centre (LHRC) and Tanzania Civil Society Consortium for Election Observation (Tacceo), the report says the existing legal framework guiding elections management cannot guarantee transparent polls.
Dar es Salaam. A new report on last October 25 General Election has concluded that the polls were free but not fair.
Released by the Legal and Human Rights Centre (LHRC) and Tanzania Civil Society Consortium for Election Observation (Tacceo), the report says the existing legal framework guiding elections management cannot guarantee transparent polls.
However, the observers said there was a need for the government to speed up the process of putting in place a new constitution that would address weaknesses noted in the 2015 polls.
Highlighting the recommendations yesterday at the launch of the report, the LHRC advocate, Mr Hamis Mkindi said there was an urgent need to initiate or continue with legal and institutional reforms on the mandate and independence of the National Electoral Commission (NEC) and Zanzibar Electoral Commission (ZEC) in line with establishing competitive recruitments for top positions.
“Elections were not fair because the electoral laws do not allow the two commissions to undertake their functions independently. Some political parties failed to conduct their campaigns due to lack funds, for this and many other reasons, we need to have a new constitution in place,” he said.
He strongly argued that the electoral bodies should be given timely and sufficient budgets for them to have sustainable management of their plans especially to have continuous biometric voter registration (BVR) updates and voter education. The report also recommended that the registrar of political parties should intensify the enforcement of the election expenses law by adopting pro-active measures including the deployment of the investigators throughout the country at least during election period.
Moreover, the report challenged political parties to make sure they abide with the electoral laws and regulations in order to avoid unnecessary frictions with the law enforcers.
