AfricaPress-Tanzania: IT is pretty natural that, currently, the upcoming General Election is the most focused upon subject in Tanzania.
It is because periodic elections do, first and foremost, produce the top-most leader of our country – the President.
That person encompass four significant attributes – Head of State, Head of Government, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, and Fountain of honour.
Those who cast their votes on polling day also produce critical political service providers, the most crucial ones of whom are Members of Parliament (MPs).
For it is within the debating chamber that the laws of the land are drafted, debated, fine-tuned and endorsed. Which, indeed, is why MPs are alternately known as law makers or legislators.
Elections also produce individuals who are part of the Executive, which, alongside the Judiciary, compose the governing triumvirate.
Against that backdrop, therefore, it is obvious, that elections are among the most important phases of the political calendar of any country that seeks to be characterised as credible.
We can confidently state, by way of a reminder, and without fear of being contradicted, that, our successive governments have endeavoured to organise and hold free and fair elections, since Tanzania embraced the multi-party electoral system in 1995.
Granted, there have been hitches here and there, and, as we have traversed the new political dispensation, earnest efforts have been made to fix them.
A disturbing trend, however, has been the tendency by some quarters in the political opposition camp to feel that it is high time the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) was shoved aside. That is a highly misplaced notion.
For multi-partyism is about political competition, whereby each party should strive to win the hearts and minds of the electorate that its policies are best placed to deliver impressive social-economic strides for wananchi.
For the sake of fairness, then, CCM has every right to compete with other parties for the ruling outfit position. It can only be dislodged from the governing status via voters’ expressions through votes as an expression of numerical strength.
Here’s where political party manifestoes come in as critical to winning voters’ hearts and minds and translate into victory votes or otherwise.
It is heartwarming, therefore, that, parties are using campaign platforms to publicize their manifestos. This momentum should be sustained. Cheap, indeed childish diversionary tendencies like character assassination must be avoided.
