PREVIEW
Securocrats in the ruling CCM don’t want to risk a free vote this year despite a stronger economy
Charging opposition leader Tundu Lissu with treason and banning him from this year’s election shows that President Samia Suluhu Hassan’s opening of Tanzania’s political space has ended. Calls by oppositionists for electoral reforms have been categorically rejected.
Lissu, who was elected chairman of the main opposition party Chadema in January, appeared in a Dar es Salaam court on 10 April after being arrested the previous day (AC Vol 66 No 3, Newsmaker: Lissu rages against the CCM machine). He has been holding rallies countrywide in recent weeks under the slogan ‘No Reforms, No Election’.
Chadema has been divided on how to approach presidential and parliamentary elections in October and November, particularly on whether to stand a slate of candidates. Last November’s local elections saw the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi take 99.1% of the vote after almost all opposition candidates were banned from standing, and with widespread reports of ballot stuffing and manipulation of the electoral register by CCM.
Dozens of opposition leaders and activists, including Lissu, were either arrested or assaulted by the police last year. Several prominent Chadema activists were murdered (Dispatches, 10/9/24, Murder of Chadema official sends chilling warning to opposition).
‘After going through that experience any Chadema member who hopes to win in the same circumstances is not serious,’ said Lissu last week.
Lissu’s stance is that Chadema should boycott the polls unless President Samia’s government provides guarantees that his party and others are allowed to stand and campaign and loosens its grip on the electoral commission.
The November 2024 local polls were run by the President’s Office, Regional Administration and Local Government (PO-RALG), which is headed by Samia’s son-in-law Mohamed Omary Mchengerwa (AC Vol 66 No 1, Samia’s liberal dawn is eclipsed).
The treason charge against Lissu includes that he ‘formed an intention to instigate the public to effect an obstruction of Tanzania’s 2025 general elections’, pointing to his comments to Chadema supporters that the party would ‘spread its defiance’ and ‘disrupt’ the elections.
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