Tanzania’s opposition does not expect the upcoming municipal elections to be fair, a conclusion reached after a series of preparation missteps seen as tilting the scales for the ruling CCM party.
And Tundu Lissu, the deputy chairperson of the opposition Chadema Party, said this week there is no hope for the opposition in the polls, coming in the wake of mass disqualification of candidates who wanted to compete in the November 27 elections.
The deadline for clearing all complaints related to the vetting of contenders was initially set for Wednesday November 13, but the Ministry of Regional Administration and Local Governments (Tamisemi) has now extended it to November 15.
Tamisemi minister Mohamed Mchengerwa announced late Wednesday that each disqualification cases would be reviewed before publishing the final candidates list.
A day earlier, CCM secretary-general Emmanuel Nchimbi had called on Tamisemi to ‘overlook’ minor errors committed by candidates in filling their forms “so that more Tanzanians have the opportunity to stand for election.”
Mr Nchimbi said his advice had the “blessing” of President Samia Suluhu Hassan, the party chairperson.
More than 80,000 chairperson and 480,000 council membership seats are up for grabs at the village, street and hamlet levels and Tamisemi—which operates under the President’s Office—has been given the mandate to oversee the polls.
Tamisem’s role had been controversial, having been given the duties despite recent law changes that shifted the responsibility to the electoral commission.
A court ruled later that the law needs to be clarified to ensure elections municipal posts are also conducted by the electoral commission, which will have a duty to conduct next year’s presidential and parliamentary elections.
Opposition parties led by Chadema and ACT Wazalendo have complained vigorously of thousands of their aspirants being struck out by poll supervisors for unjustifiable reasons since the vetting exercise began on November 8.
This came on the back of an equally troubled voters registration process where Tamisemi was accused of padding the registry books with ineligible voters, including underage schoolchildren and deceased people, to ultimately come up with record figures.
Political observers have pointed out striking similarities in the pattern of this year’s local government elections and that of the last civic poll in 2019, which ultimately paved the way for a controversial 2020 General Election where CCM secured a massive but highly disputed victory with the opposition was almost totally obliterated.
According to official results from the 2019 poll, CCM won in 99.9 percent of the villages, 100 percent of streets and 99.4 percent of hamlets.
Speaking to the media in Singida on Tuesday, Mr Lissu gave the first clear signal that Chadema’s hopes for a better election outcome this year had all but died.
He said the whole preparations exercise had become compromised beyond repair, from voters to candidates' registration, and suggested that the opposition should beat a “strategic retreat” and start reorganising by returning to the basics of its crusade for democratic reforms.
“The numbers are still coming in but the trend is already indicating at least 100,000 Chadema candidate disqualifications, for the same flimsy reasons as last time, and we don’t have enough time to successfully petition for all of them to be reversed.” he said.
“Perhaps we will manage five per cent, at a stretch. This election is already over and done with, and that’s the bitter truth. Tamisemi has made sure of that even before the first ballot has been cast. If you ask me if there is any way we can salvage the situation as it stands now, my answer would be no.”
According to Mr Lissu, in Dar es Salaam alone with the highest number of villages, street and hamlets, more than 95 percent of Chadema candidates had been disqualified.
ACT-Wazalendo said in a November 11 statement that more than 50,000 (or 60 percent) of its candidates had been cut, and there were similar complaints from the Civic United Front and NCCR-Mageuzi parties.
According to the parties, disqualification reasons cited by poll supervisors this time around have included improper filling of the candidacy forms such as spelling mistakes, failure to prove ability to read and write or present acceptable job credentials, and the absence of authentic party sponsorship stamps.
Mr Mchengerwa last week described the opposition complaints about their candidates being cancelled out en masse as "propaganda," insisting that the vetting was based on strict rules for filling candidacy forms that were laid out before the exercise began.
On Tuesday, Lissu blamed the opposition's current civic poll predicament on “mistakenly” placing its trust in an ill-fated political reconciliation process with CCM that President Samia initiated after taking power in 2021.
“The maridhiano (reconciliation) thing was a total farce from the word go and we wasted a lot of valuable time which we should have used in pushing for a new constitution with more seriousness,” he asserted.
"We were duped and we fell for it. We now need to fix that mistake and return to our primary focus from the outset, and that begins with the new katiba first and foremost. No more of being blindly led astray by sweet talk of reconciliation.”
