Tag Archives: kikwete

Zanzibar election nullified as Magufuli easily wins Tanzanian presidency

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Though it was the most competitive presidential election in the history of democratic Tanzania, the ruling party candidate, public works minister John Magufuli easily won the election last Sunday in results announced earlier today by Tanzania’s elections commission.zanzibar
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Magufuli emerged as a dark-horse candidate of the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM, Party of the Revolution)  after a contentious fight left former prime minister Edward Lowassa and foreign minister Bernard Membe (the favorite of outgoing president Jakaya Kikwete) both precluded from contention.

Earlier this summer, the spurned Lowassa decided instead to depart for the opposition camp, becoming the presidential challenger for a coalition that includes Chama Cha Demokrasia na Maendeleo (popularly known simply as Chadema), a liberal opposition party formed in 1992.

Tanzania’s electoral commission announced that Magufuli won 58.46% of the vote while Lowassa won just 39.97%. The CCF is also expected to win a majority of the 357 seats in Tanzania’s Bunge, the unicameral parliament.

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RELATED: Genuinely competitive election boosts Tanzanian democracy

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Lowassa, who served as Kikwete’s prime minister from 2005 to 2008, left office in scandal and mired under allegations of corruption. While his political power and support base made him the most potent possible challenger for Chadema, it also tarred the previously anti-corruption opposition party. No longer would Chadema necessarily be the party of change nor would it be the party of transparency and good government, and its 2010 presidential candidate Wilbrod Slaa left the party and endorsed Magufuli.

Works minister John Magufuli performed push-ups on the campaign trail to show his fitness for office. (Facebook)

Magufuli, age 55, swatted away criticisms of old age and ill health, at one point doing push-ups on the campaign trail to demonstrate his vigor. The showdown between him and Lowassa was among the most contested election campaigns in the country’s history, with both candidates vying for an electorate that’s one of the world’s youngest — 50% of the population is between the ages of 18 and 32.

But as easily as the national elections seem to have gone throughout the Tanzanian mainland, the islands of largely autonomous Zanzibar have been far more problematic.  Continue reading Zanzibar election nullified as Magufuli easily wins Tanzanian presidency

Genuinely competitive election boosts Tanzanian democracy

Edward Lowassa, a former prime minister, hopes now to lead the Chadema opposition party to power in Tanzania. (Facebook)
Edward Lowassa, a former prime minister, hopes now to lead the Chadema opposition party to power in Tanzania. (Facebook)

It’s not every day that hopes for reform and good government lie more with reelecting the dominant party that’s held power since 1977 than with opting for the opposition.tanzania

But increasingly, that seems to be the case in Tanzania, where the October 25 general election pits John Magufuli, the standard-bearer of the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM, Party of the Revolution) against Edward Lowassa, one of the CCM’s former presidential hopefuls and a disgraced former prime minister. Lowassa is running as the candidate of the Ukawa opposition front that includes Chama Cha Demokrasia na Maendeleo (popularly known simply as Chadema), a liberal opposition party formed in 1992, and Chama Cha Wananchi (CUF, Civic United Front), the Zanzibar-based opposition party.

Changing places?

Though Lowassa is the wilier politician, the CCM is still favored to hold onto power after Sunday’s elections. Since multi-party politics were introduced in 1992, the CCM has had little trouble maintaining its lock on the Tanzanian government. On the mainland, at least, the CCM (and before 1977, its predecessor, the Tanganyika African National Union) has been virtually interchangeable with government.

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But Lowassa’s popularity as a former CCM official, the desire for change among the country’s powerful youth, and growing opposition strength in Zanzibar have made this year’s elections particularly unpredictable.

The current contest between Lowassa and Magufuli has its roots in the tussle earlier this year to determine the CCM’s successor. Jakaya Kikwete, Tanzania’s fourth post-independence president, is term-limited and, while he’ll continue to lead the CCM until 2018, he will leave the presidency after a decade in office, generally maintaining Tanzania’s stable path to greater development. Continue reading Genuinely competitive election boosts Tanzanian democracy

Nkurunziza’s reelection effort brings violence in Burundi

bujumburaPhoto credit to AFP.

It was all so very predictable and very preventable. burundi

The decision by Burundian president Pierre Nkurunziza to seek a third term in the country’s upcoming May 26 elections is spawning a violent and deadly response in a country where Nkurunziza’s agreement to presidential term limits was a key element of the Arusha peace accords that ended the landlocked east African country’s civil war over a decade ago.

Amid growing repression in the last two years, and reports of intensified attacks at the hands of the Imbonerakure, a militia and youth wing of the country’s governing party, Nkurunziza’s push to win a third consecutive term in office now threatens to engulf the country once again in political violence that could morph into deeper ethnic conflict. Nkurunziza and his advisers are taking the position that because he was appointed to the presidency in 2005 and elected in 2010, he is technically entitled to run for a ‘second’ term in 2015. Nevertheless, political opposition figures and international observers alike disagree strongly with that rationale.

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RELATED: As world remembers Rwanda genocide,
Burundi tilts into political crisis

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With protesters defying government efforts to disperse crowds in the capital city of Bujumbura, a handful of people have already been killed, and aid workers report that hundreds of thousands are fleeing their homes. In addition, reports indicate that Burundi’s borders were being closed today to foreigners trying to enter the country, and the government is shutting down independent radio outlets.

I wrote last summer for The National Interest just how toxic a Nkurunziza reelection bid could become. Above all, the political instability exacerbates the lack of foreign investment in Burundi, which is one of sub-Saharan Africa’s poorest countries. Descent into further political chaos, and resulting internal displacements, would only emphasize the widespread poverty and lack of development throughout the country.

The best-case scenario for Burundi would be for Nkurunziza to rethink his reelection plans. It’s difficult to fathom that the governing Conseil National Pour la Défense de la Démocratie–Forces pour la Défense de la Démocratie (CNDD-FDD, National Council for the Defense of Democracy–Forces for the Defense of Democracy) would lose power, even without Nkurunziza leading it as a formal matter. Conceivably, Nkurunziza might even continue to exercise discretion over top government functions, even if he is no longer Burundi’s head of state.

If Nkurunziza goes forward for a third term, the opposition will almost certainly boycott the vote, as they did in 2010 when the process was deemed unfair and unfree. That’s not a great outcome, and it would invalidate the election, as a matter of international opinion. That, however, would still be much better than a slide into civil war. Avoiding further bloodshed as the 2015 vote approaches is more important than achieving a milestone for democracy in a country where democracy has never been a priority — and will not be a priority in the midst of a violent clash. The risk is that political confrontation will eventually mutate into the kind of ethnic hatred between the Hutu majority and the Tutsi minority that devastated neighboring Rwanda and culminated in the 1994 genocide. No one today believes that Burundi is necessarily destined for ethnic conflict, but a new civil war, based on either political or ethnic differences, should be a major concern for regional leaders.

Rwandan president, Paul Kagame, met with Nkurunziza earlier this month, ostensibly to discuss the rising number of Burundian refugees fleeing to Rwanda. But the term-limited Kagame has pledged to step down as Rwanda’s president in 2017, and there are already rumors he may seek to extend his own mandate. Tanzanian president Jakaya Kikwete in March warned Nkurunziza not to seek a third term, imploring him to respect the terms of the Arusha accords signed in Kikwete’s country a decade ago.