Dar es Salaam. The opposition party CHADEMA has clarified that its ‘No Reforms, No Election’ stance is not an election boycott, but rather a call for Tanzanians to demand polls be held in an environment of freedom and justice.
CHADEMA’s Acting Deputy Secretary-General (Tanzania Mainland), Amani Golugwa, made this emphasis during an exclusive interview with this publication on Tuesday, explaining in detail the difference between leading a movement for change and the act of boycotting an election.
“The word ‘boycott,’ for the most part, involves someone who has given up, foregone, and is sitting idle,” Mr Golugwa says in the interview available to watch here.
“We have not said we have ‘let it go,’ that we should just sit,” he added. “[That] we are surrendering. We are in a fight, and that is why we refrain from using the word ‘boycott.’ To boycott is to say, ‘let’s leave them to it,’ and then you fold your arms. We have not said we should leave them to it and fold our arms. We have said we will fight until the last drop of blood.”
This statement from the senior CHADEMA leader comes at a time when there are exactly two months left before Tanzanians go to the polls to elect a President, MPs, and councillors in the General Election expected to be held on October 29, 2025.
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On the side of Zanzibar, the citizens on the islands will also participate in this election, which for them will start earlier, on October 28, 2025, due to its controversial two-day voting procedure. Apart from electing the President of Tanzania and MPs, Zanzibaris will also elect the President of Zanzibar and members of the House of Representatives for the semi-autonomous archipelago.
Golugwa’s statement also comes at a time when CHADEMA is facing serious challenges that are weakening its ability to function as a political party. These include its chairperson, Tundu Lissu, being in detention facing charges of treason, alongside the party itself being barred by the court from carrying out any political activities, including public rallies.
A Tanzanian issue
“This struggle is not for CHADEMA leaders, nor is it for CHADEMA members,” Golugwa points out in his interview with The Chanzo. “This is a matter for Tanzanians; it is a Tanzanian issue. It is to say, ‘look, it is like this: let us prevent anything that will be called an election which does not reflect changes in the electoral systems.
“Let us prevent it until the last minute. If it fails, until the very last minute, meaning until that final day, if it fails, then we will say we have fought until the last drop of blood, we have fought.”
Golugwa clarified that if October 29, 2025, arrives and the government refuses to implement the minimum reforms they want, including the main issue of making the powers of election management authorities free from the influence and interference of the President, CHADEMA will mobilise Tanzanians to prevent that exercise.
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He said if that fails, they as a party will not recognise that event as an election but as an “abomination.”
“We will not participate in that event because the fundamental issue is reforms. If they are not done, there is no way [we can participate],” he insisted. “What we will see is not an election, and that is why I am trying to draw this line: that there is something called an election, but because there are no reforms, we do not see an election.”
No regrets whatsoever
Golugwa flatly rejected the notion that CHADEMA’s move to refuse to sign Tanzania’s and Zanzibar’s Codes of Electoral Conduct was a “strategic miscalculation” on the part of the opposition party. He said in clear terms that the party has no regrets whatsoever for not participating in those exercises, and that this matter did not happen by accident.
Both commissions, that of Tanzania and that of Zanzibar, have interpreted that decision by CHADEMA to not sign the Codes as self-disqualifying from participating in the elections—a claim that CHADEMA itself rejects, arguing that there is no set deadline for signing and that the party can decide to sign the Codes at any time.
“Up to this minute, I assure you, and I tell Tanzanians, up to the moment I am saying these words, there has not been a single miscalculation,” Golugwa clarified. “Actually, some of the things happening are spinoffs; they are additional results within the logical framework of our strategy.”
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Among other things, the party’s fundamental demands for reforms are in the Constitution, based on the belief that if you have a Constitution that creates good electoral systems, that Constitution will give you good laws that will govern and manage the electoral systems, and good rules that dictate how the election should be conducted, along with other guidelines.
“Now you are rushing to Codes [of Conduct] which themselves are derived from a bad law, which is derived from a bad Constitution,” says Golugwa. “We have no regrets whatsoever for not participating in that abomination, and we believe that Tanzanians understand us and support us.”
