Dar es Salaam. The opposition ACT Wazalendo party announced Tuesday that it is boycotting Political Parties Council’s consultative meetings, accusing the organ of failure to promote multiparty democracy in Tanzania as well as legitimising frauds and violence during elections.
The party’s secretary-general Ado Shaibu said in a statement that the decision arises from the left-leaning party’s meeting of March 10, 2025, adding that the boycott starts with the upcoming council’s meetings of March 12 and 13, 2024.
Established by the Political Parties Act, the Political Parties Council is mandated to advise the Registrar of Political Parties on the disputes arising amongst political parties as well as matters of national interest, among other functions.
However, according to Mr Shaibu, the Council, whose members are at least two national leaders of each fully registered political party in Tanzania, has failed to execute that mandate, and instead serves as a platform where electoral fraud and violence are “justified and sanitised.”
Mr Shaibu said that there is no need for ACT Wazalendo to take part in the meetings that the Council organises as the government has “repeatedly ignored and refused to honour its resolutions,” particularly those aimed at improving electoral competition, justice and fairness in the country’s elections.
He gave examples of resolutions arrived at during the October 11, 2024, meeting in the capital Dodoma on what reforms the government needed to take to ensure free and fair local government elections of November of that year, which authorities ignored despite earlier promises that they’d work on them.
During the local government elections, accompanied by reports of irregularities like ballot stuffing, disqualification of opposition candidates as well as violence, the ruling Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM) won by 99 per cent, prompting opposition parties to describe them as a “sham.”
“We want the government to make public a calendar on the implementation of recommendations on how we can get an independent electoral commission and other reforms, including the amendment of Tanzania’s as well as Zanzibar’s elections laws and minor constitutional reforms that would lead to free and fair elections,” Mr Shaibu said in a statement.
“Beyond that, ACT Wazalendo will refuse to be used to legitimise and sanitise the mischief in preparation to rob people of their mandate to vote for their preferred candidates and put their preferred representatives in authorities as is their constitutional right,” he added.
ACT Wazalendo’s decision to boycott Political Parties Council’s meetings comes at a time when preparations for the 2025 General Election are underway, with opposition parties and other pro-democracy actors warning that the existing legal framework does not guarantee the processes to take place in free and fair manners.
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Push for reforms is intensifying as actors fear the recurrence of what happened in the 2020 General Election, which saw massive disqualification of opposition candidates and unprecedented violence that left a dozen dead and others injured.
CHADEMA, Tanzania’s leading opposition party, has declared that without significant electoral reforms, it’ll mobilise its supporters and members of the general public to prevent the elections from happening under its No Reform, No Election slogan.
The government and CCM, on the other hand, have insisted that the elections will proceed as planned no matter what, arguing that no one has power to stop the processes from happening as it is a constitutional and legal requirement that Tanzania should hold a general election after every five years.
