Residents queue to vote at a polling station during the local elections in the town of Arusha, north Tanzania, on November 24, 2019 |
Tanzania's
ruling party has swept local polls boycotted by opposition parties amid alleged
government manipulations.
Official
results released on Monday
showed President John Magufuli's ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM)
party had scored landslide victories in almost all of the more than
330,000 local leadership positions up for grabs in Sunday's ballot, which
decided who would take office at the grassroots of government in villages,
cities and towns across Tanzania.
CCM candidates won
more than 99 percent of the 12,000 village chairmanships contested, as well as
all of the country's more than 4,000 street leadership positions.
Chadema, the main
opposition party, said earlier this month it would not be taking part in the
elections because of alleged government manipulations, including the mass
disqualification of its candidates. Several other smaller parties also joined
the boycott.
"Our party
believes it is wiser not to support such electoral cheating," Chadema
Chairperson, Freeman Mbowe said in November. "To continue to participate
in elections of this kind is to legitimise illegality."
In the economic
capital Dar es Salaam, several polling stations were closed on Sunday because the
CCM candidate stood unopposed and thus was automatically elected.
Four of Tanzania's
26 mainland regions did not hold polls at all because of the opposition
boycott.
"In most cases,
CCM candidates were unopposed," our reporter quoted Selemen Jaffo,
the minister for regional administration and local government, as saying at a
news conference in the administrative capital, Dodoma.
“In a very small
number of cases, opposition candidates did win because they had not officially
withdrawn their bid,” Jaffo said.
In the previous
local ballot in 2014, the CCM won three-quarters of the seats that were being
contested that year. Chadema picked up 15 percent.
In a country where
reliable and independent political data is scarce and the media is increasingly
under threat, analysts said the local polls could set the tone for 2020
presidential, parliamentary and council elections.
Magufuli, who is
expected to run again, has been strongly criticised by watchdogs for the
human rights record of his four-year government.
Free media has been
intimidated by draconian cybercrime laws, critical newspapers and bloggers have
been silenced, and opposition activists have been harassed, according to Human
Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
Chadema says its
activists have been kidnapped and beaten, and at least one has blamed
authorities for an attack in 2017 in which he was shot multiple times. -
Africa
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