Africa-Press – Tanzania. RULING party CCM, Secretary General, Daniel Chongolo has banned candidates for leadership positions within the party from being involved in the process of issuing nomination forms or overseeing election process across the country.
Instead, he insisted on appointing someone else to do so, to ensure a fair environment and equality in elections.
Mr Chongolo announced this yesterday in Shinyanga, on the first day of his tour in the region aimed at thanking the people and party members for the 2020 election, inspecting the party’s activeness, and examining the CCM manifesto’s execution.
He stated that intra-party elections are ongoing, and advised candidates who are current leaders from the ward level, not to oversee the election and to stay away from the process of approving candidates in order to ensure free and fair elections for all candidates.
“This is an election year; nomination forms should be distributed to all candidates, and where the ward secretary or any other party leader is running for office, it is prohibited to engage in the election process, remain candidates for fairness to be observed,” he stated.
Mr Chongolo further stated that if the party permits candidates who are party leaders to oversee the election process, they will jeorpadise its legitimacy and prevent other candidates with the ability and qualifications from running for office.
“The party has a constitution and regulations, and elections should follow them. Let us select those who are qualified and capable of assisting the party and the general public,” Chongolo stated.
Mr Chongolo noted that money allocated in the Shinyanga Region to counteract the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic in the education and health sectors were properly spent, and classrooms and health centres were built.
He also stated that, in order to boost the country’s agricultural sector, the government will provide a grant of 100bn/- to farmers to enable them to afford the best available agricultural products starting in July of this year.
Commenting on the security situation in the region, Shinyanga Regional Commissioner Sophia Mjema said the situation was calm and also incidents of violence, especially of the elderly and people with disabilities, had decreased significantly.
“Our region was one of the leading regions in terms of acts of violence against the elderly and people with albinism, but in collaboration with traditional leaders, we have successfully controlled large-scale violence, which included killings of elderly,” said Ms Mjema.
Regarding the climate change that has led to a shortage of rain, Ms Mjema said although the region has sufficient food supply but the level of rainfall is slightly less than three cubic milliliters, while the region receives about 8 milliliters of rainfall.
“We have a shortage of rain but we do not lack food, we are trying to educate the people to cultivate short-term and drought-tolerant crops,” said Mjema.
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