TANZANIA: Zanzibar poll re-run anxiously awaited
NAIROBI, 3 November (IRIN) - As Zanzibar prepares for an election re-run
in 16 of its 50 constituencies on Sunday, the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi
(CCM) party has rejected opposition calls for totally fresh elections,
raising fears of a deepening political crisis.
A meeting of the CCM central committee, chaired by President Benjamin
Mkapa, in Zanzibar on Thursday concluded that while there were some
irregularities during last Sunday's voting in the Zanzibar archipelago,
the opposition Civic United Front (CUF) party had been "lying and grabbing
votes". The main island has been wracked by violence all week in the
aftermath of the presidential and parliamentary poll.
Mkapa, who appears set for a landslide victory on the Tanzanian mainland,
must resolve the Zanzibar issue before he can be sworn in as the union
president. International observers described polling in the islands as a
"shambles". However, there will be no official observation of Sunday's
re-run and some observers have expressed concern over the fact that vote
counting on Zanzibar was stopped, with the ballot boxes removed and placed
under the supervision of district commissioners. Fresh electoral material
for the repeat polls was due to arrive from South Africa on Friday,
Tanzanian newspapers reported.
On the mainland, the CCM is approaching a three quarters majority in
parliament, which according to local analysts is a considerable increase
on multi-party polls held five years ago. Some strong opposition areas,
such as the northern district of Moshi, have been retaken by the CCM which
analysts attribute in part to a "divided opposition which has split the
vote between itself". Furthermore, the CCM "worked very hard to regain the
seats", one observer told IRIN. He added that the Chagga community in
Moshi, which is very business-oriented, had not been represented in
government at ministerial level for the last five years and may have
decided to end its opposition to the ruling party, "particularly as the
CCM has been more helpful to the business community".
In the main commercial city, Dar es Salaam, the CCM has practically swept
the board. Only one constituency, Kigamboni, went to the opposition and
independent election observers described the mainland vote as broadly free
and fair and "representative of the will of the people".
However, the mainland voting was not completely problem-free. The Temeke
constituency of Dar es Salaam - a CUF stronghold - was surprisingly taken
by the ruling CCM. An election observer said that in a situation
reminiscent of Zanzibar, CUF members took to the streets in protest,
having been subjected to police "heavy-handedness and intimidation".
Regional analysts point out that the outcome of the vote in Zanzibar will
impact on the way the international community views the situation in
Tanzania as a whole and in this regard there is much at stake for Mkapa's
next presidency. Donor assistance to Zanzibar was withdrawn as a result of
the flawed elections five years ago - largely believed to have been won by
the opposition CUF but rigged by the CCM, one analyst said. Therefore,
while the elections on the mainland received funding from the
international community, Zanzibar received no such aid.
The situation was then further exacerbated by the "incompetence" of the
Zanzibar Electoral Commission (ZEC), including voter registration problems
in the run-up to the poll such as stringent residency requirements. "The
CCM in Zanzibar recognised it was going to lose, so it set out to cause
the disruption in order to have the re-run which it could control," a
diplomatic source told IRIN. He added that another possible cause of the
chaos was the outgoing president Salmin Amour who "chose to disrupt the
polls out of vengeance" after President Mkapa refused to let him run for a
third term.
Journalists covering the Zanzibar story were this week harassed,
intimidated and arrested by the authorities. Media watchdog organisations,
such as the World Association of Newspapers (WAN), expressed particular
concern over the arrest of BBC reporter Ally Saleh who was held on charges
of "kidnapping and indecent assault of two women". Saleh, who was later
freed on bail, had been conducting interviews with the women who claimed
to have information about illegal voting on the island, WAN said. His
arrest followed a statement by CCM accusing "certain media organisations
of misreporting the polls". Other journalists had gone into hiding,
according to the Namibia-based Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA).
More violence can be expected in Zanzibar, with the opposition CUF
announcing a boycott of Sunday's voting and refusing to recognise the
election results unless there is a complete re-run. In a statement, the
Organisation of African Unity said that while voting in mainland Tanzania
had been "generally competent, efficient and orderly", it blamed the
Zanzibar Electoral Commission for "throwing Zanzibar into a political
crisis which could have been avoided if the ZEC was fully alive to its
responsibilities".
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