Author: LYDIA SHEKIGHENDA
AfricaPress-Tanzania: AFTER a historic turnout of CCM cadres seeking endorsement to contest for various posts in the upcoming General Election, aspirants are now holding their breath as they await their verdict.
Through its various organs, the ruling CCM will next Monday start conducting what is seen as a crucial process of screening its candidates.
While some aspirants beat the deadline of returning the nomination forms yesterday, some of them failed to do so, thus disqualifying themselves from the process.
According to statistics from district secretaries in Dar es Salaam Region, party members who collected nomination forms to vie for parliamentary seats were 1,210 until yesterday evening, of whom 10 aspirants failed to return them.
CCM Kilimanjaro Regional Secretary, Jonathan Mabihya said that a total of 497 cadres collected nomination forms for parliamentary and councillorship posts in the region but nine of them did not return them.
Statistics released by President John Magufuli on Thursday showed that a total of 8,205 CCM cadres had collected nomination forms for legislative seats under different categories across the country.
Dr Magufuli said Dar es Salaam Region alone had 829 candidates and other regions with high numbers of aspirants are Kagera (328), Arusha (320), Kilimanjaro (82), and Zanzibar (53).
According to the party’s timetable released early this week by the party’s Ideology and Publicity Secretary, Humphrey Polepole, the aspirants were scheduled to collect nominations forms from July 14 to 17 this year.
He said after the candidates had collected the forms, the district and constituency conferences slated for July 20 and 21 would be convened to vote for candidates vying for parliamentary and House of Representative seats.
Political committees at constituency level will convene on July 30 to screen the candidates before presenting their recommendations to district political committees and later to the regional levels.
On August 4 and 5, political committees at regional level will consider and make recommendations to the CCM National Executive Committee (NEC), Mainland and Special Committee in Zanzibar.
For party’s cadres contesting for parliamentary and House of Representative special seats as well as special groups will be scrutinised by the CCM’s Women Wing at regional level on July 27.
CCM Youth and Parent’s Regional Councils are scheduled to conduct opinion polls on July 30 and August 31 respectively, for aspirants contesting for special seats through the two wings.
On August 4 and 5, the party’s political committees at regional level will consider and make recommendations to the National Council of CCM Women’s wing while youth and parents wings national councils will conduct opinion polls on August 8 and 9 for special seats candidates representing their groups.
The National Council of CCM Women’s wing will also conduct opinion polls for parliamentary and House of Representative special seats on August 10 and present its recommendations to the NEC.
Similar procedures will also be conducted in respect of party cadres aspiring to vie for councillorship seats and final decisions for all aspirants will be made by NEC.
This year’s General Election has seen some leaders holding important positions in the government leaving their jobs to try their luck at parliamentary seats.
