CCM is sensing defeat at the ballot box, now has turned the screws on the most likely winner of the next elections: Chadema and her presidential flag bearer, Tundu Lissu. Tundu Lissu was arrested somewhere in Mbinga, Ruvuma, on what is now globally acknowledged as a “political persecution” at the same time the much maligned “TUME HURU YA UCHAGUZI” made a fool out of herself by confirming it is not an autonomous election department as the constitution articulated. This election imposter just banned the most popular political party in Tanzania, Chadema, paving the way for CCM to steal the elections. This article narrates why CCM will not hand over power to Chadema without unleashing violence. Just brace yourself for the ride of your life.
CCM is now fighting a political survival battle, knowing full well that her time to govern is exhausted. The younger generation, which is the majority, has lost faith in CCM and doesn’t expect their personal welfare to improve under CCM’s nodding eyes. With such hostile electoral demographics, CCM is now an occupying force wholly dependent on military forces and not the electorate to prolong its stay in power.
Tundu Lissu is the man to watch, and many believed he would have won the 2020 presidential election if NEC had counted, tallied the votes and declared the actual winner. It didn’t, and as a result, CCM illegally cruised to a fake election victory. Before 2019, CCM was stealing opposition votes, but the level of election theft has now assumed bizarre proportions. In the past, the only thing they really cared about was to keep the presidency in their hands, but now, with even the presidency under serious threat, they ensure the voters are powerless to choose their leaders!
CCM has perfected British colonial trickery but has also added new levers of election malpractices never seen during the colonial rule. The Dar-es-Salaam University students who were complaining about “the horrors of elitism” in 1978 had asserted that life was better under British rule, which could have been prophesying Tanzania of the election bungles of 2019 until today.
Tundu Lissu, who is widely expected to bag the 2025 presidency, was arrested for claiming his clamour for election reforms amounted to treason! Nothing can be further from the truth. He was only sarcastically debunking CCM top leaders who were accusing him of that. After witnessing massive crowds in his political hustings, CCM panicked and ordered his arrest on false charges of committing treason! What CCM is attempting to do is annihilate a Tsunami with bare hands. Paradoxically, even his predecessor, Freeman Mbowe, was arrested and locked without bail for months for treason! Fictitious treason charges are the only hope for CCM to overstay in power! How sad!
Whoever advised CCM to arrest Tundu Lissu did them a huge disservice. Most people, even in Tanzania, were unaware that CCM is an election thief, but now they do. It is not going to be business as usual anymore. Even those development partners will no longer bankroll CCM’s illegal stay in power with a clear conscience. Now they know CCM cannot win clean elections. And that ought to attract hefty consequences. Moi of Kenya is an example to learn from. Economic embargo compelled his government to meaningful reforms, and external help needs to kick in to force CCM to accept election reforms. It is the best way to avoid unnecessary bloodshed and deaths.
US congressional hearings about the dearth of Tanzania’s democracy are gaining traction. That is ominous for CCM. The police have drawn a charge sheet that alleges Tundu Lissu’s pronouncements in the Chadema internal meetings in Dar es Salaam were treasonous, while the particulars of that charge sheet indicate nothing of the sort! The charge sheet particulars allege incitement but not treason. Treason charges are weapons of choice because they are non-bailable. The aim of the police is to deprive Tundu Lissu of his constitutional right to campaign. Basically, the 2025 election is farcical.
Treason is intent and acts of illegally usurping power. The police didn’t even attempt to make that case because there is none. The Tanzania police is highly politicised, and the ramifications of the politicisation of the police have transformed it into a corruption monster just like Tamisemi. The Tanzanian political class has been weakened because it can not win elections. Now, the Tanzanian political class is at the beck and call of the top bureaucrats and the security forces. TAMISEMI and the security forces have weaponised elections as nooses to keep the political class in check. The political class is now toothless to arraign official graft in the public sector because it lacks the legitimacy to govern.
The charges against Tundu Lissu are totally baseless and helped to confirm that CCM is no longer the political force it once was. It is now a neo-colonial masquerade to hand over our natural resources and cheap labour to foreign legions. CCM no longer works for a common mwananchi, and elections are a nuisance that it can hardly endure. Tundu Lissu said he was going to sensitise Tanzanians about the election felonies CCM wantonly commit. CCM apprehended him in order to hide this. The problem for CCM is a failure to recognise the global implications of the information age. It is this information age that has rendered CCM irrelevant in the political equation in Tanzania.
The word of God forewarned that whoever covers his sin will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes it will have mercy. The illegal arrest of Tundu Lissu aims to nullify the word of God. By doing so, CCM is fighting God, and because of that, CCM’s days in power and surviving as a political party have been numbered in heaven and found wanting. It is game over for CCM, for there has been found no place for her to repent, albeit she is seeking it with crocodile tears.
Since the reintroduction of multiparty democracy in 1992, our merciful God has been patient with CCM, but CCM misconstrued mercy as a condonation of its many vices! God cannot and shouldn’t be mocked. God will rebuke CCM and set everything in order before her eyes. CCM is begging us to pray for her folly, but little does she know that the prayer of an unrepentant sinner is an abomination before God. Just like the Kings of Israel who despised God and sought divine help from false prophets, CCM is reliving that horrific era. False prophets in Tanzania have been milking CCM for promises of getting God’s assistance to restore their lost glory. False prophets are conmen, and nothing more.
The problem is that CCM doesn’t even trust those false prophets, now it is resorting to illegal means to retain power. As if locking Tundu Lissu behind bars for political reasons wasn’t enough CCM through her puppet called “TUME HURU YA TAIFA YA UCHAGUZI” has also banned Chadema from taking part in the next elections. Tanzania parliament created a number of laws, and some of them overlapped with each other, indicating the office of the Attorney General’s incompetence at drafting laws. The issue of “maadili ya uchaguzi” found in the election laws also popped up in the laws of registration of political parties!
The registration of political parties law stipulates that all registered political parties will abide by ethical conduct, which is called “maadili ya vyama vya siasa”. Under normal circumstances, one ought to expect other related laws, such as the election laws, will not reincarnate an issue that has been taken care of by the registration of political parties law. However, because CCM is transfixed in disenfranchising the voters, it repeated the same ethical matter in the election laws. The problem is that once a political party is registered, it is bound by ethical conduct and requires no reaffirmation of the same again and again in other related laws.
Welcome to the notoriety of the Tanzania election bodies.
Tanzania election bodies are a law unto themselves. They exercise extrajudicial powers that have been forbidden in the constitution. Election bodies have been given leeway to enact rules and regulations. It is in those rules where the election bodies trample the rights of opposition candidates and their political parties, and by implication the constitutional rights of the electorate.
The election laws deliberately direct the creation of rules and regulations to guide the conduct of elections, but don’t say how! This is another technical misnomer intentionally concocted by the office of the Attorney General. This empowers our venal election bodies to legislate from the pulpit of the executive desk! Two pieces of rules are designed to elbow out opposition political parties and their candidates from running in elections. CCM never venerates the rights of the electorate to pick leaders of their preference. A new culture is now well established that ensures the opposition will never have a fair chance in the elections.
One of the rules states that the returning officer will examine the election forms of the candidates and decide on their competency. If he is dissatisfied, he will proceed to remove the names of those candidates from the ballot box! That is a rigging intention well scribbled in the rules and regulations. That loophole has been exploited to tamper with opposition election forms in nefarious ways. Even if the opposition candidate attaches a passport photograph in the election forms, the returning officer can remove it and claim the forms were incomplete! Consequently, the opposition candidate is declared incompetent and is disqualified forthwith!
There are cases of returning officers changing some pages of the opposition candidates’ election forms in order to show the names, signatures, or rubber stamps were missing or had been misspelt, or the age or date of birth were incorrect! Sometimes the returning officers go A.W.O.L. in order to refuse to collect the forms from the opposition candidates. It is disgusting what they can do in order to declare CCM have won unopposed. Filling application forms for candidates is ridiculous because they have been vetted by the registered political parties. Only independent candidates should go through this tedious process because they have no legal vehicles to vet them. Moreover, applying election forms as qualifications to run for elections is unconstitutional. Only qualifications stipulated in the constitution should suffice, but how election forms are filled shouldn’t. Neither election laws nor rules can rewrite the Constitution. This is what is happening by a very partial election body: TUME HURU YA UCHAGUZI YA TAIFA.
The other rule is the one that has been parlayed to block Chadema from taking part in the forthcoming elections for five years. This rule has been created by the election body subservient to CCM. The election body under CCM shackles shouldn’t be a judge of her own cause. In this situation, the election body has legislated laws on behalf of Parliament, forcing political parties to sign a pact to abide by ethical conduct during elections. The pact is bogus because what we have are registered political parties; we aren’t dealing with independent candidates who are not bound by laws under the Political Parties Act. Besides, the election body itself never fails to violate that ethical pact with impunity. That ethical provision is an effort to disqualify opposition parties, but it has no bearing in the elections.
Besides, it is unlawful for the “TUME HURU YA UCHAGUZI YA TAIFA” to be a complainant, a witness, a prosecutor and a judge of her own cause. Both of these two pieces of rules have violated the tenets of principles of natural justice, and cannot be legal except for an extension of bad governance. A justice of the appeals court who chaperones this compromised election body says the matter can now be resolved by courts, but why create a problem that undermines even the integrity of the election body itself?
Is this how autonomous public departments envisaged by the constitution behave? Fathoming unnecessary problems that burden the court of laws with silly matters? Why not conduct itself with decorum and morality deserving of such public institutions? Does the election body delude itself into thinking it is God who can redeem CCM from the divine fate awaiting her at the ballot box?
CCM is done, and her puppets in the election commission cannot salvage her dwindling political fortunes. Let her die a natural death, or euthanasia is the horrible option lurking in the wings.
Read more analysis by Rutashubanyuma Nestory
