Africa-Press – Tanzania. TANZANIA is mulling over e-voting adoption, in a grand plan to attract more voters during elections, President Samia Suluhu Hassan said yesterday.
Speaking at the Dar es Salaam State House in Dar es Salaam, President Samia also called for the review of election laws to ensure no candidate is disqualified based on minor technical issues.
“For example in the last election, when candidates misspelled a letter of his/her name or their parties were disqualified, as a result some of our candidates won unopposed,” President Samia said whilst urging political parties to be very careful in order to avoid the traps.
She made the remarks shortly after receiving a report on the 2020 General Election submitted by the National Electoral Commission (NEC) Chairman Judge (Ret) Semistocles Kaijage.
The report, among other things, shows that only 15.9 million, being 50.72 per cent of over 29.7 million registered voters voted during the previous general election.
Concerned with the voter apathy, President Samia said it was high time the country considered adopting digital voting during elections, as it will give a platform for many Tanzanians to vote.
“The world is in the fourth industrial revolution heralded by Information and Communications Technology (ICT), hence, we shouldn’t be lagging behind instead, we should use the available digital opportunities for voters to exercise their rights,” she said.
President Samia said many registered voters fail to show up during polls for a number of reasons including their day to day businesses and suggested that ICT should address the challenge by enabling everyone to vote regardless of their localities.
“We should plan for that (ICT)….we will be able to let more people participate in the elections,” she insisted, noting that if the electoral body, NEC, will deploy a good system, people will be able to vote from their localities.
During his presentation, the NEC Chairman also suggested the need to review the NEC and Local Government Authorities (LGAs) laws for the elections to be coordinated by one organ and that those who emerge unopposed should also be voted for or against.
Judge Kaijage (rtd) suggested for the government to recruit elections officers at the Local Government authorities (LGA’s) as well as financing the Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) on providing civic education.
Responding, President Samia tasked the relevant institutions in collaboration with stakeholders to analyse the suggestions and advise the government on what could be done.
“Regarding the government supporting CSOs and recruiting election officers at LGA’s… this might be a burden to the government in terms of a budget, but all these can be put in the table of discussion and see what can be done,” she explained.
In another development, President Samia called on women to continue taking part in various elections by vying for different leadership positions.
She equally urged political parties to trust women and nominate them during elections as they are capable of delivering to the maximum.
“Participation of women during elections is still low despite the fact that women are many compared to men. It can be proved from the number of voters registered by NEC,” said the Head of State.
In the last year’s general election, NEC registered over 29.7 million voters of which women were 50.4 per cent and men were only 49.6 per cent.
Earlier Judge Kaijage (rtd) said last year’s polls were faced by a number of challenges including Covid-19 outbreak, low turnout of voters.
“Also poor road infrastructure in some areas which resulted in delayed supply of electoral materials and complaints from some agents of political parties being denied entry to the polling stations,” he said.
