Dar es Salaam – The last flicker of competitive politics in Tanzania was extinguished on Wednesday when the High Court delivered its final rejection of Luhaga Mpina’s constitutional challenge, ending a two-month legal odyssey that had offered the country’s only realistic hope of a meaningfully contested presidential election.
The ruling in Constitutional Case No. 24027 of 2025 not only terminates Mpina’s own political ambitions but completes the systematic dismantling of meaningful opposition that has characterised the run-up to the October 29 election.
With the former government minister’s legal options exhausted and his ACT Wazalendo party haemorrhaging candidates to defection, President Samia Suluhu Hassan now faces the most uncompetitive presidential field in Tanzania’s multi-party era.
The court’s decision represents far more than one politician’s electoral defeat—it marks the symbolic demise of experiment in competitive democracy that began with Tanzania’s transition to multi-party politics in the 1990s.
What unfolded over the past two months reads like a masterclass in institutional coordination designed to eliminate political threats whilst maintaining democratic appearances.
READ MORE: ACT Wazalendo Endorses Luhaga Mpina as Presidential Candidate for 2025 Election
The machinery of exclusion operated with surgical precision, deploying administrative procedures, legal technicalities, and selective enforcement to achieve what outright prohibition might have accomplished less elegantly.
Defecting to ACT Wazalendo
The saga began with promise. When Mpina defected from the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party on August 6, it represented the kind of high-profile political realignment that could have energised Tanzania’s moribund opposition.
Here was a former livestock minister with government experience, public recognition, and insider knowledge of CCM’s vulnerabilities—precisely the kind of figure who could mount a credible presidential challenge.
ACT Wazalendo moved swiftly to capitalise on this opportunity, replacing their own party leader, Dorothy Semu, with Mpina as their presidential nominee. For a brief moment, Tanzania appeared poised for its most competitive election in years.
That promise lasted exactly 20 days.
On August 26, the Registrar of Political Parties nullified Mpina’s nomination following a complaint by ACT Wazalendo member Monalisa Joseph Ndala. The grounds were procedural—Mpina had allegedly not been a party member long enough to qualify for the presidential ticket, violating the seven-month minimum membership requirement.
The decision revealed the first layer of the exclusion mechanism: internal party procedures could be weaponised by disgruntled members to eliminate unwanted candidates.
The registrar’s willingness to entertain Ndala’s complaint, whilst simultaneously refusing to investigate similar allegations against President Samia’s nomination by CCM dissidents, left questions to many analysts who cited selective application of procedural scrutiny.
This administrative sleight of hand created the legal foundation for everything that followed. By ruling that Mpina lacked proper party sponsorship, a requirement under Tanzanian electoral law, the registrar provided the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) with seemingly legitimate grounds for exclusion.
ACT Wazalendo’s legal challenge initially succeeded in spectacular fashion. The High Court’s September 11 ruling declared Mpina’s disqualification unconstitutional, finding that INEC had violated his right to be heard and exceeded its authority by following the registrar’s directive.
Short-lived victory
The three-judge panel’s decision appeared to establish crucial precedents about judicial oversight of electoral administration and the protection of political participation rights. For 48 hours, it seemed that Tanzania’s courts retained sufficient independence to check executive overreach in electoral matters.
The victory proved pyrrhic. On September 15, just two days after INEC had complied with the court order and formally nominated Mpina, the commission removed him from the ballot again. This time, the mechanism was an objection filed by the Attorney General—citing the same registrar decision that the High Court had effectively overruled.
ACT Wazalendo’s constitutional challenge represented their last legal avenue. Filed as Case No. 24027 of 2025, it directly confronted both INEC’s decision-making authority and the underlying jurisdictional issues that had enabled Mpina’s exclusion.
The case proceeded with unusual urgency, reflecting the electoral calendar’s constraints. The High Court rejected the government’s request for additional preparation time, scheduling rapid-fire written submissions and hearings for early October. The compressed timeline suggested judicial recognition that electoral disputes required expedited resolution.
Wednesday’s adverse ruling closes this final chapter. The court ruled that it does not have the legal jurisdiction to hear challenges against decisions made by the INEC. As a result, the case was thrown out on this procedural point without the court ever considering its actual merits.
The court’s decision validates the electoral commission’s authority to exclude candidates based on administrative determinations, effectively insulating electoral management from judicial interference. Some fear that the precedent established could make future challenges to candidate exclusions significantly more difficult to sustain.
Broader electoral prospects
The legal defeat coincides with organisational collapse that threatens the party’s broader electoral prospects. In the final days before the election, several prominent parliamentary candidates have abandoned ACT Wazalendo to join the ruling party or withdrawn from the races entirely.
READ MORE: ACT Wazalendo Mounts Final Legal Challenge to Restore Luhaga Mpina’s Candidacy
Jackson Kangoye’s defection to CCM in the Tarime constituency represents a particularly damaging blow, given the Lake Zone’s historical importance to opposition politics. Christopher Fredrick Bundala’s similar move in Kahama Ubarn and Ahmad Hashimu’s withdrawal from the Nanyumbu race complete a pattern of calculated abandonment that maximises damage to party morale and organisational capacity.
The timing is particularly devastating—occurring too late for the party to field replacement candidates but early enough to signal institutional collapse to voters. The defections serve as a public demonstration of ACT Wazalendo’s political irrelevance, potentially depressing turnout and enthusiasm among remaining supporters.
Mpina’s defeat completes the systematic exclusion of viable opposition that has characterised the 2025 electoral cycle. The earlier sidelining of CHADEMA—traditionally Tanzania’s main opposition party—combined with the detention of its leader Tundu Lissu on treason charges, had already eliminated the most established opposition force.
The systematic elimination of competitive opposition risks transforming President Samia’s re-election from a political achievement into an administrative inevitability. She now faces seventeen largely unknown candidates who lack the resources, recognition, or organisational capacity necessary for serious presidential campaigns.
This outcome serves the ruling party’s immediate interests by providing electoral legitimacy without competitive uncertainty. President Samia will receive a popular mandate that validates her leadership whilst avoiding the risks associated with genuine political competition.
READ MORE: CCM Dissident Luhaga Mpina Joins ACT-Wazalendo After Exclusion in Party Primaries
However, analysts warn that the circumstances of this victory—achieved through exclusion rather than persuasion—may carry longer-term costs. The absence of meaningful opposition debate deprives the election of substantive policy discussion and reduces voter engagement to a largely ceremonial exercise.