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How Magufuli has steered Tanzania down the road of one-party State

TANZANIA’S 2020 general elections resulted in a predictably easy victory for one of Africa’s oldest ruling parties, Chama Cha Mapinduzi. BY NICODEMUS MINDE The National Electoral Commission declared the incumbent, John Magufuli, the winner with 84,4% of the vote. His closest challenger, Chadema’s Tundu Lissu, garnered a paltry 13%. The ruling party also won 261 of the 264 parliamentary seats. This represents 98,86% of the total. Similar results were reported in Zanzibar, a semi-autonomous island region of Tanzania. There the presidential candidate Hussein Mwinyi was declared the winner with 76,6% of the votes. The ruling party captured all but three House of Representative seats. Results also indicate that it won a landslide in the ward elections. But the elections on the island and on the Tanzanian mainland were marred by serious irregularities and poll violence. The elections were carried out in an environment of widespread intimidation and harassment. There was heavy police and army deployment in the lead up to the elections. After the poll, opposition leaders were arrested and detained and civilians were shot by the police. The results mean that Chama Cha Mapinduzi now has absolute political control over Tanzania and Zanzibar — more than at any time since the advent of the multiparty era in 1992. The party’s domination has been strengthened through repeated electoral victories, decades in power, and the exclusion of the opposition. While there has been a global-retreat in democracy Tanzania’s democratic rollback over the past five years has been unprecedented. Ever since Magufuli’s election in 2015, the democratic environment in Tanzania has changed. The country is currently categorised as “partly free” by Freedom House on its democratic index. Given events pre and post the election, it could soon be classified as “not free”. Dismembering the opposition Magufuli’s first term started off on a positive note. He vowed to fight corruption and make government more efficient. But it was not long before his presidency became characterised by persistent infringement of human rights, repressive laws and repression of political opposition. For example, there were repeated arbitrary arrests and detention of opposition politicians, a rise in police brutality, as well as a crackdown on the media and civil society. The conduct of this year’s election exemplified this authoritarian turn. From the onset of the latest electoral cycle, it was evident that Chama Cha Mapinduzi was hellbent on winning and consolidating its grip on power. It soon became clear that the electoral commission was biased and that the police force was partisan. In these circumstances, the opposition stood little chance of challenging the status quo. This is not unusual for opposition parties in a number of African countries. In an article published in 2018 I set out how opposition parties were regularly weakened in a systematic way by ruling parties. Tanzania fits this description. Magufuli vowed to annihilate the opposition when he came to power five years

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