Isles election crisis lingers on

Jussa who has himself had a fair share of racist slurs from senior member of the ruling party, said any bad thing that does not happen in other parts of the world, would happen in Zanzibar.

Jussa was one of the speakers invited by the TLS to air his views over the review of the 2015 general election which had seen Zanzibar being locked in an election crisis.

He said during the days of the Afro Shirazi Party (ASP) that had lost an election by single vote and because the winner could not rule with such a slim victory, a re-run of the election was held and Zanzibar had to be brought under interim administration.

It was not difficult to note where Jussa was driving to. This is because more or less the same thing has happened in Zanzibar.

However, instead of stepping down to allow an interim government to take its rightful place, the contending man in the re-run set for March 20, is still clinging to power.

To date, Jussa says the main opposition party in the Isles, CUF, is yet to be told what really happened that led the Zanzibar Election Commission (ZEC) Chairman, Jecha Salim Jecha to cancel Zanzibar election results, three days after winners had been presented with their certificates for winning their respective elective posts.

Claims about some polling stations in Pemba having more numbers of vote casts than the number of voters had been shot down through CUF’s evidence that showed non-existence of such claims.

Yet unlike Zanzibar where a number of people were denied their constitutional right to cast their votes, in Pemba no one was subjected to such a thing.

Jussa claimed that after the polling day on October 25, 2015, Seif Shariff Hamad led his opponent, Dr Ali Mohamed Shein with 25,000 votes.

He said, that came to pass despite allegations that many people were denied the opportunity to cast their votes on the polling day.

He named other queer developments that could only happen in Zanzibar as the setting of a date for the re-run of the election while simultaneously denying political parties the right to campaign before the election.

The second queer development was ZEC’s decision to allow candidates who had been sacked by their political parties to vie for elective political posts.

He questioned about what would happen if candidates who had been sacked by their own political parties from vying for the election re-run, won.

If at all they would be allowed to take their seats as members of House of Representatives, then which political party would they be representing?

If they won an elective political post and their former parties maintained that they didn’t recognize them as their leaders, would that not be tantamount to allowing free candidate?

If free candidates are allowed to vie for elective political posts, why then did past proposals by the Late Reverend Christopher Mtikila to allow free candidates was not implemented despite its passage by the African Court’s ruling in June 2013?

Jussa said while the Union President, John Pombe Magufuli said, legally, he was barred from intervening in the present Zanzibar election crisis, the Tanzania Peoples Defence Forces which fell under his command as the Commander-in-Chief were in full force in Zanzibar.

Jussa said what can be discerned from what has been going on in Zanzibar is an attempt by the powers that be to frustrate free and fair democratic elections in preference for the imposition of leaders who failed to get through the ballot box.

The risk of pursuing such a dangerous path, he said, was to encourage people who think they have repeatedly been robbed of their rightful election victories to look for alternative means of getting what they believe belongs to them.

The Vice President of the Zanzibar Law Society (ZLS), Omar Said, on the other hand said what was both queer and interesting in equal measure was that the ZEC chairman who had cancelled Zanzibar election results was the same man who had now not only announced the re-run of the Zanzibar election, but had also gone ahead to announce the date for the re-run of the election.

Perhaps what is more strange, according to ZLS vice president, was the ZEC chairman’s decision to cancel election campaigns and his refusal not to allow those who had been elected in the cancelled election to decide whether or not to take part in the election re-run.

However, if people, especially foreign observers find the foregoing strange, then one wonders what would be their opinion over a people who don’t seem to have the courage to question these strange developments which have all the hallmarks of injustice.

But nothing is bound to leave one with short of words than the nullification of election results at a time when people who had won House of Representatives seats are still clutching onto their certificates which had been handed over to them by the same authority upon winning their respective seats.

• Attilio Tagalile is a journalist/author and media consultant based in Dar es Salaam and can be contacted through [email protected]