One week to go: Mistrust as Kikwete fumbles with numbers, opposition cries wolf

With only a week to go to the General Election, arguments have erupted between the National Electoral Committee (NEC) and the opposition parties regarding the voter register and procedures to follow on polling day, October 25.

The opposition, grouped under the so-called Alliance for a People’s Constitution (whose Kiswahili acronym is Ukawa), have claimed that the voter register is incomplete and defective, giving examples of individuals whose names do not appear on it as well as pointing to garbled names of voters, erroneous birth dates and wrong accompanying photographs.

First it was an issue of arithmetic. The Ukawa presidential running-mate, Juma Duni Haji questioned the number of voters eligible to vote, claiming the figures had been inflated to give a total of 32.4 million voters while the total number of valid voters was only 23.7 million.

Duni’s calculation was basically that if you take the number of polling stations 72,000 and multiply that by the number of voters per station (450) you get 32.4 million.

The electoral body, through its chief executive Kailima Ramadhani, gave the explanation that Duni had taken the maximum number of voters allowed for every polling station (450) to be the norm for all polling stations whereas, in fact, many would have a smaller number of voters.

Still, the issue got more muddled when, a couple of days later, President Jakaya Kikwete was quoted as putting the total number of voters at 28 million. Telephone callers inundated the NEC public information centre demanding clarification of the president’s statement. Later a State House official in the communications department, Premmy Kibanga, corrected the figure given by the president.

A spokesperson for the NEC information centre, Clarence Nanyaro, confirmed that the centre had been giving clarifications, giving the official number of voters as the NEC knew it, but more calls kept coming in.

“We are inundated, our systems cannot cope. But we have insisted to all the callers that the correct number of voters is the one given out by the NEC, not that given by the president,” said Mr Nanyaro.

The Chadema candidate for the presidency, Edward Lowassa was quick to challenge the NEC on Kikwete’s erroneous on figures, saying he had been misled by the electoral body into giving false numbers.

“How is it that the president gives a figure and within a couple of hours that figure is reversed?” asked Lowassa on his campaign tour of the Lake zone. He warned the NEC to be more serious about its work and not to do anything that could lead to chaos.

Another bone of contention is what voters need to do after casting their votes. The opposition has been calling for voters to stay close to the polling stations after casting their votes, to “guard our votes” against vote stealing and falsification,’ according to Chadema’s chairman, Freeman Mbowe.

The electoral commission has been calling on voters to respect the electoral laws and regulations and to keep a distance of at least 200 metres as stipulated by the law. Kikwete has issued a stern warning to people who will stay too close to the polling stations on polling day.

Kikwete warning

“Those who say they will stay close to the polling stations on polling day intend to cause chaos, and we shall deal with them according to our laws,” President Kikwete said on Nyerere Remembrance Day in Dodoma this past week.

The head of the Southern African Development Community ( SADC) election observation team, Oldemiro Baloi, also advised voters not to crowd the polling stations after voting, because that would provide an opportunity for some people to try and influence those who come to vote later.

Baloi, who is also Mozambique’s foreign minister, said his was a simple piece of advice, though he was certain the relevant domestic laws would play their role adequately in ensuring a peaceful election.

According to a Dar es Salaam academic, George Sungura, the whole argument does not make sense, and “it is indicative of the levels of mistrust among the people.”
He added: “Standing 200 metres from the polling station, even 50 metres or even 20, does not enable you to monitor what is happening inside the polling station.”

On the campaign trail, meanwhile, the leading contenders continued to make promises in their attempt to lure voters into their corner. All sorts of things have been promised, and there is understandable doubt as to whether these promises stand any chance of ever being fulfilled. Sungura has such doubts.

”The problem is that we have built up a culture in which a candidate presents himself as a Father Christmas figure. He or she promises all kinds of goodies he will bring to the kids on Christmas day. But the people are not children, not all of them anyway,” said Sungura.

During the week, another dramatic defection from the ruling Chama cha Mapinduzi hit the headlines. Juma Volter (JV) Mwapachu, former secretary-general of the East African Community, announced he was quitting the party because it had lost its direction and was no longer fit to rule the country.

JV, who is also former Tanzania ambassador to France and has served on many CCM committees and think-tanks and is also chairman of the Dodoma University Council, paid a call on his ward’s CCM office in Mikocheni, Dar es Salaam to hand back his membership card on Nyerere Remembrance Day, saying he had chosen the date for his action deliberately.

“I have chosen this date deliberately because I believe that had he been alive, Mwalimu himself would have quit the party he himself founded. This is not the party I joined back in the day. It has lost all sense of direction and purpose,” he said.

This is a major defection, even for a party that has been experiencing more than its share of defections over the past few months. JV did not wield any power within CCM; nor did he exert much influence in the party. Still, his dramatic departure, coming after the numerous other defections from that party, paints a picture of a ship losing some of its ballast.

Apart from his contribution to the party’s intellectual heft over the years and serving as a senior diplomat, JV is one of the more recognisable public figures in Dar es Salaam, serving on numerous boards at home and abroad. He is the current president of the Society for International Development (SID), an international NGO based in Rome.

He boasts notable political pedigree, too. His father, the late Hamza Mwapachu, was instrumental in getting a young protégé of his, Julius Nyerere, to play a central role in the nationalist movement in Tanganyika in the early 1950s.

Once again, amid all the political grandstanding, accusations and counter-accusations, tragedy has struck. The Member of Parliament for Ludewa in Njombe region, Deo Filikunjombe (CCM), perished in a helicopter accident in Selous game reserve in the south of the country as he was headed home. The pilot and two other people also died.

Filikunjombe was a vigorous legislator who showed singular incisiveness in handling issues before the parliamentary oversight committees on which he served. He was looking to renew his mandate.

Two other prominent Tanzanians died in the same week, of natural causes. The minister for Trade, Abdalaah Kigoda, died in India where he was undergoing treatment, while the chairman of the National League for Development (NLD), Emmanuel Makaidi died in his home area in a Lindi region hospital in the south of the country.

These deaths at this advanced stage of the campaigns will mean the postponement of parliamentary elections in the affected constituencies.

OP The East African