by Bayano Valy in Zanzibar – SANF 05 no 93
Zanzibaris took to the polls on Sunday in what political party leaders, voters and observers have so far described as peaceful and orderly elections.
The Zanzibar election was to take place simultaneously with the Union poll throughout the United Republic of Tanzania, but the latter was postponed under its electoral law due to the death of an opposition vice-presidential candidate.
Since Zanzibar enjoys an autonomous status in non-Union matters, the Zanzibar Election Commission (ZEC) was guided by its own electoral law to proceed as planned and hold elections on the two islands, Unguja and Pemba, to choose the Zanzibar president, members of the House of Representatives and local councillors.
Zanzibar has 509,906 registered voters, spread across 50 constituencies. There are six presidential candidates, of whom one is a woman; 219 candidates for the House of Representatives (196 men and 23 women); and 340 ward and council candidates (28 of these are women).
A leading international elections expert, Prof. Reginald Austin, has commended the ZEC on the level of preparedness for the elections.
“The process has been organised well and it’s efficient,” he told SANF during rounds made between midnight and 1:30am on election day to see the movement of ballot boxes to polling stations.
He added that ZEC seemed to have everything covered. He was impressed that everyone from the presiding officer to the poll officers knew what they were doing.
“It’s important that people know that the process is quite difficult to organise,” he said, adding that everything seemed to have been done to allay fears of any misconduct.
Austin was technical adviser to the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) which organized the successful presidential elections in 2004. He also organized the transitional elections in South Africa in 1994 as Director of the Electoral Component of UNOMSA, and was the Chief Electoral Officer of the UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) 1992-1994.
Austin, a Zimbabwean law professor, said he was impressed that most polling centres are managed by women.
Polling stations opened at 7 am local time with only a few failing to open on time due to minor glitches.
Turnout in the morning period was quite high in some areas with long queues. Apparently civic education campaigns had been successful because even the sick were brought in stretchers to vote.
The incumbent, President Amani Abeid Karume, voted soon after the opening of his polling station in the Kiembe Samaki constituency, in the West Urban region. On his way out after voting, he told the press that he is confident that the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) would win the islands’ poll.
He said his party has the support of the people, adding that he hoped Zanzibaris would vote peacefully.
Voting four hours later at the Mtoni constituency, his main challenger, Seif Shariff Hamad of the Civic United Front (CUF) said that he was satisfied about the orderly and transparently professional manner the elections were going on so far. Mtoni is a CUF stronghold.
“If things go as smoothly as they have so far, we’ll have no problems accepting the results,” he said.
There have been violent incidents in the islands after past elections due to CUF claims of vote rigging after the ZEC has announced the winner.
Since the authorities do not want a repeat of this, and because in the run-up to the election there were skirmishes involving some supporters of the two parties, the Union government has deployed the army – the Tanzania Peoples Defence Forces (TPDF) –comprising both islanders and mainlanders.
Hamad said that as long as the army did not interfere with the voting process CUF had no problems with them.
He claimed that the reason he appeared late was due to the abduction of four of his senior assistants and officials, carried out by a group of militia, insinuating they might be from the ruling party. However, when asked if such thugs had been caught, he replied negatively but could not say why he had made the allegations.
Vote counting will start after the close of polls at 5pm, and it is expected that some preliminary results will start coming out on Monday. (SARDC)
