Tanzania is undergoing a political ‘earthquake’ that can only be cooled off once the election laws are aligned to the fidelity of the constitution.
The election laws have defiled clear constitutional principles and permitted a few CCM leaders to usurp the electorate’s power to choose leaders they trust.
This article revisits the new election laws, pinpoints areas that have violated the constitution and suggests how to fix them to restore sanity in a nation on the brink of civil unrest and bloodshed.
For some time now, I have been mulling over what to do to arrest the political standoff threatening to splinter the nation into pieces. Behind the political animosity lies a dispute centred on election laws that do not intend to capture and respect the voter’s voice.
Very few elites inside CCM are determined to oust the constitutional mandate bestowed on all citizens to determine the nation’s destiny. As a result, they are insolent and grandstanding over meaningful election reforms that will place voters at the centre of it all.
Those leaders depend on security forces to unleash lawlessness as the means for personal survival.
READ RELATED: Tanzanian Election Reforms Questioned: Will Future Elections Be Free and Fair?
Since the reintroduction of multiparty democracy in 1992, Tanzania has changed more to bamboozle foreign development partners and keep the spigots ajar of the influx of development funds and loans.
It was more about caving into overdependence on foreign direct investment (FDI) than realising and appreciating competitive politics’ impact in attracting the best talent to serve the nation.
Let’s reveal it once and for all: almost all CCM leaders would like to see the nation enslaved in poverty forever and evermore.
Since independence, CCM and its mother, TANU, have weaponized massive poverty as a tool to control the hearts and minds of Tanzanians.
Once poverty, ignorance and diseases are wiped out, CCM will be devoid of leverage to whip up the nation to her ironclad subjugation.
No wonder, whether in the military, bureaucrats, the judiciary, or even within CCM ranks, a carefully crafted carrot-and-stick system is strictly observed to keep everyone in check.
Rebellion is punished, while hypocritical loyalty is sumptuously rewarded. Without holding the reins of the Treasury, CCM has nothing to cudgel a nation into submission.
Devoid of a popular ideology, CCM is now an empty shell facing the gallows of a natural death that is postponed by frequent interventions from the security forces.
Unlike Nyerere’s TANU, which at least depended on Ujamaa ideology to win the hearts and minds of the electorate, CCM has negated any pretence to serving ordinary citizens and is now a vanguard party esteeming and exuding cronyism, hypocrisy, and nepotism.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) selection committee lacks national identity as it is packed to the rim with presidential CCM appointees.
The Attorney General (AG) ensures that whoever is picked as commissioner or chair of the INEC is trusted to commit election fraud in favour of CCM.
The Chief Justice and other judges have conspired to frustrate legal challenges and throw them out to maintain the status quo, notwithstanding the electorate’s wishes.
Under constitutional principles laid down under the doctrine of the separation of powers, the judiciary is a corruption of any executive organ of which it is a member.
Anyone attempting to challenge this law in a court of law will be defeated by a collage of the judiciary and the A.G. Increasingly, Tanzania is becoming a country of very few filthy rich, leaving the rest in abject poverty.
Most Tanzanian rich owe their prosperity to their loyalty to CCM, where they have eaten their bread. Outside CCM, they find the going too hard, forcing them to do the “about-turn “ and surrender to the party of BABA NA MAMA.
READ A Critical Look at Tanzania’s Election Law Revisions, Is Fair Election a Distant Dream?
The aftermath of the 2015 presidential elections left indelible lessons for the nation. Almost all CCM senior cadres who decamped to Chadema to support Edward Lowassa’s presidential stab quickly retracted their steps to CCM, citing constant harassment and victimisation from CCM.
The election laws have empowered the INEC to discriminate against all Tanzanians and sanction civil servants to manage elections!
This is an unconstitutional period! Our constitution forbids all forms of discrimination, but the election laws recently passed fathomed discrimination based on occupation.
As a result, the election law is permissive for the civil service to appraise itself, rendering our elections laughable.
Apart from the sins of discrimination, our election laws allow the civil service to evaluate itself. Elections ask the electorate what the rulers and their supporting machinery have fared in the last five years.
The supporting machinery is the civil service. Logic and commonsense, let alone the constitution’s clear stipulation, demand that politicians and the civil service have nothing to do with elections, but CCM keeps legislating such unjust laws, amounting to self-appraisal!
This country claims in its constitution to be a multiparty democracy, but in practice, it behaves as a one-party state.
We Are a De-facto One-Party State, and The Allure of a De-jure State is Wishful Thinking
This is why in one of my previous articles on the matter, I urged to abandon multiparty democracy, cut the crap and acknowledge we have failed to manage multiparty democracy.
In the election law, no attempt has been made to recognize Tanzania is a multiparty democracy!
There is zero consultation with all registered political parties on how the INEC selection committee is formed and how the opposition will be a major stakeholder there to ensure fairness, transparency, and accountability to the electorate.
Only the CCM president is a supreme stakeholder who picks members of the INEC selection committee from his appointees and turn up as ex officios in the INEC, of all people! I am talking about massive electoral fraud gold inked in the election laws.
The election laws made no effort to impose the latest technologies in transfer, reportage, and display of election results. By doing so, election fraud has been condoned, certified, and assented to by election laws.
Cases of bureaucrats and security forces forging results are too many to ignore.
Yet the election law saw no evil and read no evil! There was no attempt to depart from the murky past, and “business as usual” was preserved to ensure future elections were condemned to past electoral malpractices.
The election laws were silent on voter registration as a continuous process, not dictated by the dates of elections. It is regrettable that voter registration eligibility after turning 18 cannot be honoured on the birthday.
One has to wait patiently until an election is near! I keep wondering what INEC is doing between the election dates to justify the insane salaries they collect every month.
What stops INEC from registering voters daily on weekdays if not intentionally purposed to deter new eligible voters daunted by the hassles of long queues that may interrupt their timetables during electioneering seasons?
My Proposals to Fix The Election Fraud and End The Political Impasse
First and foremost, the election laws should forbid the chief justice and all judiciary members from interfering with our elections.
Second, the AG is too hawkish to sit anywhere near the INEC selection committee.
Civil servants of all sorts should also be barred from flipping our elections. Elected members from all registered political parties should form the INEC selection committee.
Each registered political party will give one name directly elected from the national conventions of political parties.
Whoever is chosen to serve on the INEC selection committee must not hold a political post in a political party or have been a government employee in the last ten years before the appointment.
This is to shield the INEC committee from the vagaries of elitism nuisances. Once those names have been known, the INEC executive Secretary will gazette those nominees in the government gazette.
A High Court judge will swear in all members of the INEC selection committee, and their first task is to elect a chair and vice chair among themselves and hire the secretariat in the public selection process.
The INEC selection committee will advertise all posts in the INEC commission and the secretariat and fill them as soon as possible.
The INEC commission will recruit and discipline its body. The commission will have branches in all constituencies manned by its employees.
INEC employees must not have been members of any political party or government employees in the last ten years before being hired by the commission. INEC will update the voter’s register on weekdays, not waiting to ambush the electorate during electioneering seasons.
Latest technology, such as the one used with such regularity by IECK—the Independent Election Commission of Kenya, Kims Kit—records, transfers, and publishes on the public portal election results of each polling station.
All election results must be declared within 72 hours after the closure of the polling stations.
Solar, wind or any renewable energy will be used to power Kim Kit and other electronic gadgets to ensure that the lack of power from TANESCO is not used to cement and stratify gross election fraud.
It is risible that INEC, which brags about being an independent body, is selected by the CCM president and is not required by election laws to publish polling station results. This leaves us with disturbing questions: How did INEC compile the constituency results without accounting for polling station results?
In my opinion, the new refurbished election laws are the biggest scam in recent memories against the peace-loving people of Tanzania.
Tanzania’s current need is not to hand over cheaply prime assets to aliens but to establish a system of governance that will produce “Viongozi Bora Badala ya Bora Viongozi.”
Whenever you hear “Mpishe Mwekezaji”, know fully well that our leaders are incompetent beyond description.
They do not understand how to manage the enormous human and natural resources this country has been divinely endowed with.
As a result, they run like kindergarten pupils to foreign lands in search of mercenaries whose aim is to exploit everything we have ever had to their advantage, leaving us picking the crumbs that fall over their high tables.
