Tanzania - Politics

The October 1995 elections were not completed on schedule, as the National Electoral Commission found irregularities at certain polling stations. The vote in seven Dar es Salaam constituencies was annulled and re-run on 17 November. Ten opposition parties announced that they would boycott the repeat elections, and all the opposition presidential candidates withdrew. The Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) emerged with a substantial majority (approximately 75% of the vote) in the parliamentary elections. The presidential election held at the same time brought to power CCM leader Benjamin Mkapa. (Ali Hassan Mwinyi, who had served two terms as president, was not eligible to stand again and had retired before the election.)

Former President Julius Nyerere died in October 1999 after a long illness. As one of Africa’s foremost international statesmen he was widely mourned and many world leaders attended his funeral in Dar es Salaam.

In Zanzibar, the 1995 election returns were strongly disputed. The Civic United Front (CUF), which enjoys strong support on Pemba, claimed that its leader, Seif Sharif Hamad, was returned as president of Zanzibar; it therefore refused to recognise the officially returned president, Salmin Amour of the CCM. The CUF, with almost 50% of seats in the Zanzibar House of Representatives, began to boycott parliament.

The dispute in Zanzibar continued until finally the CUF’s agreement to return to parliament and acceptance that Amour would remain as president until the election to be held in October 2000 was reached through the good offices of the Commonwealth Secretary-General. The CCM’s candidate for the 2000 Zanzibar presidential election was Amani Abeid Amani Karume, who was more widely acceptable than Amour.

In October 2000, Mkapa won more than 70% of the votes in the national presidential election, and the ruling CCM took 167 mainland and 35 Zanzibar seats in the National Assembly, with the balance split between the opposition parties. In Zanzibar, elections for the Zanzibar presidency and House of Representatives were once again completely rejected by opposition parties and were not accepted to be free and fair by international observers. Though the poll was re-run in 16 districts of Zanzibar, this was boycotted by the opposition, who demanded a complete re-run.

Karume and the CCM were officially declared the winners but a high level of tension persisted in Zanzibar. About 30 CUF supporters were shot dead at a rally on the island of Pemba in late January 2001 and at least 2,000 people fled from Pemba to Kenya. Then, through the good offices of the Commonwealth Secretary-General and with continuing pressure from the national government and the international community, talks got under way, and in October 2001 the parties reached agreement on a peace accord. The main planks of the accord were the holding of by-elections in those seats of the Zanzibar parliament which had been declared vacant when CUF members refused to take them up; reform of Zanzibar’s election law and setting up of a permanent election register; and giving statutory force to the impartiality of Zanzibar’s state-owned press. Progress in implementing the accord was slow, but the by-elections in Pemba were held peacefully in May 2003, the results were readily accepted by CCM and CUF, and efforts to foster political reconciliation continued.

Following the sudden death of an opposition vice-presidential candidate in October 2005, the general election was postponed until December, but the elections in Zanzibar were held at the end of October 2005. CCM candidate Karume won the presidential poll with 53% of the votes, while the CUF’s Seif Sharif Hamad took 46%. The ruling CCM also won the parliamentary elections with 30 of the 50 elected seats. The CUF did not accept the result of these fiercely contested, and in places violent elections but the Commonwealth observer group present, in its interim statement, said that the conditions overall were such as to enable the people to express their will.

In December 2005 the CCM was successful in both presidential and legislative elections. Having served two full terms Mkapa was not eligible to stand again for the presidency and, in a 72% turnout, CCM candidate Jakaya Kikwete was elected president. CCM took 206 seats in the National Assembly, with CUF (19 seats) accounting for most of the rest.

A report by a parliamentary select committee in early 2008 accused Prime Minister Edward Lowassa and two members of the cabinet of corruption, involving a US-owned energy company. Lowassa subsequently resigned, denying the allegations, and Kikwete dismissed the rest of his cabinet. His new cabinet, which included Mizengo Pinda as new prime minister, had 13 fewer ministers.