Pre-polls presure rising

Dar es Salaam. The blame game has started eight months before the General Election. This time it is President Jakaya Kikwete who is in the firing line.

The Chadema deputy chairman, Prof Abdallah Safari, says President Jakaya Kikwete will be personally responsible if things go wrong during the General Election because he has failed to honour pledges of reforming the National Electoral Commission.

Prof Safari noted that President Kikwete had an opportunity to reform NEC after the negotiations with political parties under the Tanzania Centre for Democracy last August in Dodoma, but failed to do so.

In the TCD negotiations, among other things, it was agreed that the 1977 constitution should continue to be used but with the following amendments to facilitate the holding of free and fair election. That the winner of the presidential elections should garner more than 50 per cent of all the votes cast; presidential election results should be contested in court; independent candidates be allowed and that an independent electoral commission should be set up.

The setup of an independent NEC would also include amendments to the Elections Act.

Speaking to Political Platform Prof Safari said it was a pity that CCM has failed to reform NEC for more than 20 years now since the first multiparty General Election.

“It is difficult to hold a free and fair elections without an independent electoral commission. But the powers that be must understand that people have changed and will not be ready to see their votes stolen. It is evident that chaos might ensue,” Prof Safari noted.

The TCD negotiations came after the opposition parties boycotted the Constituent Assembly seatings in April last year.

The opposition walked out of the CA protesting what they called being bulldozed by CCM. One of the issue that caused problems was the issue of the structure of the union.

The constitutional draft by forward to the CA by the chairman of the Constitutional Review Committee Judge (rtd) Joseph Warioba proposed a three government union structure.

But the CA changed it to two government union structure something that the opposition, under its umbrella organization, Defenders of People’s Constitution known in its Kiswahili acronym as Ukawa, opposed saying the CA had not mandate to change the contents of the draft constitution.

After months of boycotting the CA seatings President Kikwete met with the leaders of political parties in Dodoma where they, reportedly, agreed to postpone the constitutional making process and amend the new 

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