John Magufuli, the President of Tanzania, has won a second term in a landslide. The election, held last week Wednesday, saw Magufuli win 84% of the vote. His closest rival, Tundu Lissu, won 13%. The rest of the vote was divided between 13 other candidates.
In 2015 John Magufuli, who represents the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party, had a much narrower victory, winning less than 60% of the vote. (It and its predecessor – TANU – have governed Tanzania uninterruptedly since independence.) However, this year’s election campaign was marred by claims of intimidation of opposition parties. Local and international observers also said that political speech had been censored during the campaign. Messaging and social media services, such as WhatsApp and Twitter, had also been restricted in the run up to the election, as had SMSes.
Lissu challenged the result, He was quoted as saying: ‘What happened yesterday was not an election. It was not an election by any measure whatsoever, whether it’s in accordance with Tanzanian laws or international laws.’
Another party, ACT Wazalendo, said that its leaders in Zanzibar had been beaten by police. They also claimed that the police had killed ten people before and during the election. There were also claims of tampering with ballot boxes.
Despite these claims two regional bodies of which Tanzania is a member, the East African Community and the Southern African Development Community, gave the election their stamp of approval.
CCM also won the parliamentary election, which was held at the same time, although final results were not available at the time of writing.
Image by Greg Montani from Pixabay