NEC could have averted the Chadema Special Seats saga

What you need to know:

Scrutiny of the legal framework shows that the Chadema special seats dispute has been caused by an omission on the part of National Electoral Commission (NEC) in providing political parties with a clear, transparent and uniform modality for the selection special seats legislators

Since the dispute regarding the selection of 19 Special Seats MPs through Chadema arose in November 2020, the urge to revisit the legal framework governing special seats in Tanzania’s Parliament got the better of me. Scrutiny of the legal framework shows that the Chadema special seats dispute has been caused by an omission on the part of National Electoral Commission (NEC) in providing political parties with a clear, transparent and uniform modality for the selection special seats legislators.
The constitution
The procedure for the implementation of the special seats system is guided by Articles 66(b), 67, 78 and 81 of the 1977 Constitution of the United Republic of Tanzania, and Section 86A of the National Elections Act. It requires not less than 30 percent of all categories of members of parliament be set aside for women through a special seats system.
The procedure allows political parties which obtain at least five percent of the total valid votes in parliamentary elections to submit to NEC the names of eligible women for nomination as special seats MPs. After elections, NEC is supposed to follow the order of preference provided in lists proposed by eligible parties, and declare the number of special seats members in proportion to the number of votes obtained by the parties.
A woman qualifies to be a special seats MP if she is a citizen of the United Republic of Tanzania, has attained the age of 21, can read and write in Kiswahili or English, and, most importantly, is in the list submitted to NEC by an eligible political party.
Article 81 of the 1977 Constitution requires NEC to make provisions specifying the procedure to be followed by political parties for the purposes of nominating and proposing the names of women special seats MPs. However, NEC has consistently overlooked this requirement.
Consequently, there are no clear guidelines on the implementation of the women’s special seats system, including absence of the procedure for the selection of women to special seats by political parties. Since its establishment in 1993, NEC has not provided political parties with a clear, transparent, and uniform modality for the selection of special seats legislators as required by Article 81.
A number of challenges
This has caused a number of challenges in the implementation of the special seats system, including controversy surrounding the 19 special seats MP, who have ostensibly been nominated to Parliament from Chadema. In the absence of a clear, transparent and uniform modality for the nomination special seats MPs by political parties, it is difficult to discern who is telling the truth between Chadema national leaders, who have vehemently denied having ever submitted a list of nominees to NEC, and the commission, which, on the other hand, maintains that a list was indeed received from Chadema.
A simple presumption should be made here. If a clear, transparent and uniform modality of the selection of special seats MPs existed, it would mean that a list of nominees from all political parties would be known, and would be with NEC before, during or soon after the elections, waiting for endorsement.
If this were the case, when Chadema declared that it would not endorse what it claimed were rigged elections and gave up its special seats allocation, the public would have known the names of special seats nominees Chadema had recalled from NEC.
Accordingly, eyebrows would have been raised when Chadema claimed that “forged party documents containing a list of women selected for special seats from Chadema were submitted and acted upon by NEC”. Similarly, when the 19 women took what Chadema described as an “illegal” oath as special seat MPs, the ball would have been firmly on NEC’s and Parliament’s court to explain why went ahead and endorsed a list of nominees recalled by Chadema.
In a situation where each political party has its own internal, and mostly unknown, procedure for selecting women for special seats, concerns such as whether the names of the 19 women were legitimately and or illegitimately obtained and submitted to NEC will remain. Legally, there is no amount of explanation from either NEC and/or Chadema that could clear this confusion.
Clear, transparent mechanism
The only way this mix-up could have been avoided in the first place was if NEC had in place a clear, transparent and uniform mechanism for political parties to select women to special seats – a responsibility it has under Article 81 of the 1977 Constitution. Unfortunately, this confusion adds to existing mistrust and concerns about the special seats system.
A complete overhaul of the special seats system is overdue. In the meantime, NEC could rescue the existing system by working with the stakeholders to come up with a clear, transparent and uniform modality meant to guide political parties on the process of picking special seats nominees.