These made-up voter numbers will make jokes of our elections
Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission workers arrange ballot material ahead of the final general election in Uasin Gishu County, Kenya, on August 7, 2022.
Dar es Salaam-based political and social commentator
Some thirty years ago, I was in parliament, that single-party legislature that was trying very hard to shoehorn Tanzania into a multiparty dispensation hugger-mugger, because the party hacks of the CCM party were psychologically not prepared to accept what their founding father, Julius Nyerere, was telling them: Adopt or perish.
A few of us in that parliament seriously wanted genuine change, but we knew that we were in an infinite minority, that most of our colleagues, especially those in some positions which made them think they were in power, were just doing what was necessary to stay there, doing nothing to advance the cause of plural politics.
It is funny but true, that they did not want meaningful pluralism, which would allow people to self-organise in autonomous like-minded guilds to champion their common interests; rather the party hacks would tell some of us --- I was one of those thought to be juvenile and uppity — that “they” had “given” what we wanted and we should be happy with it.
It was a system of “vyama vingi” (many parties), without a soul, a mechano-bureaucratic arrangement that knows only how to tick boxes without bothering about the contents inside the containers. I wrote in a local private paper (Wakati ni Huu) at that time that CCM was all but brain-dead, and what has happened between then and now has vindicated me (I think), only the cadaver is waiting for an undertaker.
So, we are dealing with the effects of an organism that is likely to disrupt and disturb, rather than nurture and advance.
When, three decades ago, we proposed the inclusion of the institution of the independent candidate in our elections, we were told rather glibly that what was needed was parties not independent candidates.
Now we have people straightjacketed in parties they do not want to be in but cannot leave because they must belong to a party!
At the same time, in these days when parties are going through the motion of registering their members for the upcoming elections, slated for the last week of November, we read reports of wild rigging manoeuvres which, if proven true, could make Tanzania’s elections the source of many jokes around the continent.
There have been complaints that children under the voting age have been registered, mostly without their knowledge. Social media posts have shown so many little ones giggling at voting lists with their names with ages that are laughable. Also, many names have been identified as having been registered over and over again.
To cap it all, the government ministry responsible for local government has published a compilation of the numbers of registered voters for the administrative provinces of the country, and the figures are strange, to say the least, because the apathy of the populace in the whole registration exercise has been widely noted, and there is no way that people will have been registering in the dark.
According to one local newspaper which has been studying the last census numbers for the provinces and comparing them with the ministry’s voter registration numbers, it is clear that what we are being made to understand is that registration was made in the dark.
Which would somehow explain this urge of registration numbers while our streets, hamlets and villages are not experiencing any corresponding effervescence.
And that is not all. In a number of provinces, apparently more people registered to vote than are on the census registration lists, such that some provinces have reported higher voter registration numbers than the number of citizens in the same areas.
It is possible, of course, that since the census was concluded two years ago, some more people have attained majority age and they have the right to be registered as voters, but that is an assertion that would have to be taken with a ladle of salt, given the other observations in this piece.
All the brouhaha is about local elections, at the most local and parochial, which may sound like insignificant, but that is where political and governance issues are most crucial, where they touch the people most directly.
That is the whole essence of governance at its most basic level. If for any reason our people are disconnected with this level of election, or they are made to think it is not an election, or they are made to swallow results they did not want or accept… then the whole edifice of one’s governance is a castle of sand, and it cannot stand.
Five years ago, John Magufuli built his castle of sand in these elections, and the following year he added another level of sand during the general election, which was the completion of his enormous sandy castle, with which he left us when he was summoned by his Maker.
Looking around, I do not see many architects or engineers who can carry on this construction on this rickety site that we have all inherited from an absent-minded builder who tended to take himself for God.
So, heed the lesson, and be humble.
Ulimwengu is now on YouTube via jeneralionline tv. E-mail: [email protected]
