Written by
Faridah N Kulumba
Africa-Press – Tanzania. Tanzania’s four opposition parties on 21 August 2021 turned down the invite by registrar of Political parties to attend the handing over ceremony of the 2020 general election report at the State House in Dar es Salaam.
The invite were sent to the Director of Protocol, Communications and External Affairs for Chadema, John Mrema, for ACT-Wazalendo, Salim Bimani, Civic United Front (CUF), Mohamed Ngulangwa and National Convention for Construction and Reform (NCCR) and all confirmed receiving the invitation from the Director of the National Electoral Commission (NEC) but they declined to attend the event.
The NEC Director was requesting the presence of the National Chairman, General Secretary, Presidential Candidate to attend the handing over of the Presidential Election Report for the 2020 General Election which declared President John Pombe Magufuli the winner. The four parties reiterated their stand that the 2020 general election was null and void.
2020 elections
According to the official count by Tanzania’s National Electoral Commision President Magufuli won his second term, with a landslide victory of more than 84% of the vote in the 2020 election. His main opponent, Tundu Lissu earned 13% of the vote.
However, Magufuli’s main challenger, Lissu of the Democracy and Progress party (Chadema), declined the outcome saying that the election was full of fraud, and he called on the international community not to accept the results.
5 Reasons for not attending the ceremony
Through the Secretary General the party wrote a letter to the Director of Elections informing him that they were not going to attend the ceremony, and they outlined five reasons defending their stand.
The Chadema party, whose presidential candidate Tundu Lisu came second in 2020 general elections, said there was no election and could not take part in any event that justifies the election.
Chadema also said that they are now focusing on defending freedom, justice, democracy and human development since their former candidate was forced to flee the country due to threats to his life.
The ACT party stated that experience showed that reports from Zanzibar Electoral Commission (ZEC) for the 2020 general election and NEC aimed to justify the elections by writing false statements.
In another development, CUF and NCCR also stated their intention of not participating in the event basically because when they reported the 2020 general elections NEC took no action.
So all parties maintained their stand for not attending the NEC report handing over ceremony on ground that after the general elections they reported their grievances to the National Electoral Commision they did not get any help, and from a point of view they did not expect anything new to be reported by the same office wich declared Magufuli president.
