Tanzania: Party nominees or independent candidates?

What you need to know:

Independent candidates will certainly excite some sections of reluctant voters who have given up on politics and political parties. However, our continued fascination with what they can offer on our political stage has more to do with the continued efforts to prevent them from making their appearance

The reasons for this are many and varied depending on the context of a particular country where in some it is historical and in others there are ethnic considerations in the mix. Politics can be an emotional affair in so many ways, however, when it comes to delivering elections where candidates sponsored by political parties have struggled to fulfil them, it would not be too farfetched to argue that voters will be skeptical about the independents delivering much without the support of political parties one way or the other. Political parties can be a dysfunctional mess but they offer organisational processes beyond the reach of independents who may either be too many to mount any coherent strategy against political parties or too few to matter in parliamentary votes. Election campaigns have come to be prohibitively expensive affairs even for some small political parties let alone individuals competing in elections. On this end, political parties have far more resources than independents and can never be out-performed. This means that independents once elected can be more susceptible to being bought off or enticed to join hands with the government or ruling party. It also means the political field will be more ‘muddier’ and can lead to parochial, fractured view on politics.

Tanzania: Party nominees or independent candidates?

What you need to know:

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