Author: MARY RAMADHANI
AfricaPress-Tanzania: TANZANIA plans to spend a total of 331.7bn/- on conducting the General Election embracing the presidency, legislators and Members of Parliament and councillors, scheduled for October this year, announced the National Electoral Commission (NEC).
In his opening remarks at a meeting embracing the Commission and political party representatives, the NEC Chairman, Rtd Judge Semistocles Kaijage, said that the government, through its consolidated fund, would cover the costs for the exercise, in accordance with Section 122 of the national electoral law.
“The commission’s prepared budget in running the General Election is a sum of 331,728,258,035/- that is expected to be spent on preparations and running expenses of the coming general elections,” he explained.
According to him, the commission was continuing to procure various equipment and tools, including printing of forms, electoral laws, guidelines and directives. He explained that a total of 25 tenders that involve printing of various publications, ballot boxes, voter education materials and printing of ballot papers had already been advertised; and some tools had already been received.
The main agenda of the meeting held at the Julius Nyerere International Convention Centre (JNICC) yesterday, focused on the preparations for the 2020 General Elections and the issues to be considered by the political parties, he said. Judge Kaijage said that a total of 29.2 million voters had been registered to vote for this year.
NEC explained that in the two phases of updating the voter’s register, there were 7,326,552 new registrations; and a total of 3,548,846 updated their information while 30,487 were struck out as they no longer qualified.
“Due to the number of voters (29,188,347) in this year’s General Election, there would be 80,155 polling stations, each of which would cater for not more than 500 voters,” he elaborated.
He added that nomination forms for the presidential candidates would be issued on August 5 at the Commission’s headquarters in Dodoma, while parliamentary and councillors’ forms would be issued to local and county councils from 12th to 25th August.
The number of constituencies have remained 264 as was the case in the 2015 elections of which, Tanzania Mainland has 214 constituencies and Tanzania Zanzibar has 50 constituencies, with the number of wards being 3,956, he noted.
He also mentioned another important area during the general elections to be voter’s education, whereby the commission has prepared itself in creating awareness to the public concerning the exercise, through mediums that include traditional and social media, as well as in various publications.
The commission has given licences to 252 civil society organisations among which seven are from the Isles, to provide voter education.
Meanwhile 97 institutions and organisations are waiting for permits to be election observers.
Rtd Judge Kaijage urged political parties to conduct civilised campaigns, and refrain from violence, inciting chaos at party rallies, not to use abusive language, slander, sarcasm, humiliation, intimidation, sexism, disability, or insulting the physical appearance of individuals atcampaign rallies and other activities.
He requested all political parties to read and act according to the code of conduct during the election season.
