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| Election officers wait for voters in one of voting stations in Dar es Salaam yesterday |
By Staff
Reporter, Dar es Salaam TANZANIA
Tanzania
on yesterday held local government elections, viewed as a test case ahead of
national polls next year, with the main opposition party and other six parties boycotting
the ballot citing violence and intimidation.
The long-ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party of
President John Magufuli is therefore set for a sweeping victory.
The nationwide polls, with over 19 million
registered voters, elect the lowest rung of local government leaders.
The posts, for the chair of villages and
streets, are critical for organising public meetings and mobilising grass-root
support campaigning.
Chama Cha Demokrasia na Maendeleo (Chadema),
the main opposition party, said in November it would not be taking part in the
elections because its candidates were too fearful and were unfairly
disqualified from running by stringent rules they say were used to block them.
Six other smaller parties have also joined the
boycott.
Chadema say their activists have been kidnapped
and beaten, and at least one has blamed authorities for an attack in 2017,
which saw him shot multiple times. Several have disappeared and turned up
murdered.
“Our party believes it is wiser not to support
such electoral cheating,” Chadema president Freeman Mbowe said earlier this
month. “To continue to participate in elections of this kind is to legitimise
illegality.”
In the economic capital of Dar es Salaam, many
poll centres were closed because the CCM candidates remained
unopposed, and was therefore automatically elected, our reporter said.
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| President John Magufuli |
Three out of Tanzania’s 26 mainland regions; Katavi,
Ruvuma and Tanga did not hold polls at all due to the opposition boycott.
In a few voting stations, candidates from small
opposition parties are standing.
The government has dismissed Chadema’s claims
as excuses.
Rights groups say the intimidation of political
opponents has escalated sharply under Magufuli, a strongman elected in 2015
whose administration has wielded wide-ranging laws to silence government
critics.
Political analysts say the vote offers a
preview of the bigger polls set for 2020.
“The sign of rain is clouds,” said Deus Kibamba,
head of the Tanzania Citizens’ Information Bureau, a research think-tank.
“To me, what happens in the local elections is
a picture of the general election.”
Magufuli, who is expected to run for another
five-year term in 2020, has overseen a democratic backslide in Tanzania,
according to Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
Free media has been cowed by draconian
cybercrime laws, critical newspapers and bloggers have been silenced, and
opposition activists harassed unlawfully, the rights groups say.
“This so-called multiparty system in which
people are beaten, thrown in jail or killed for their opinions is worse than a
one-party state,” said Elizeus Yanga, a high school teacher from the north-western
region of Mwanza.
“Magufuli has done everything to make Tanzania
a de facto one-party system.”
In the last local elections, in 2014,
Magufuli’s CCM took
almost three-quarters of the more than 12,000 posts. Chadema won 15 percent.
“Why is there this mistreatment of opposition
parties, which are already weak?” Kibamba questioned, saying that the ruling
party would still dominate in free and fair polls.
“The opposition has been banned from rallies
and other political activities in the last four years,”
CCM – and its
pre-union predecessor TANU –
has ruled Tanzania continuously since independence in 1961. The country will
hold general elections at the end of 2020 and president Magufuli, in power
since 2015, is expected to seek a second term.
Critics accuse the ruling party of deliberately
blurring the line between state and party. One-party rule in Tanzania only
ended in 1992.
Observers say Sunday’s elections will give
clues on public sentiment about Magufuli’s rule ahead of the 2020 general
polls.
Preliminary results are due on Monday.
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