by Bayano Valy – SANF 05 no 95
The Southern African Development Community (SADC) Electoral Observer Mission, the main regional election observation team, has described Sunday’s poll in Zanzibar as “credible and legitimate.”
The elections were peaceful, professionally managed and transparent, said the head of SEOM, John Pandeni, Namibian Minister of Regional and Local Government, Rural Development and Housing.
The Zanzibar election was to take place simultaneously with the Union poll, but the latter was postponed due to the death of an opposition vice-presidential candidate. This owes to the fact that Zanzibar enjoys an autonomous status in non-Union matters.
The Union elections for president and parliament in the United Republic of Tanzania, as well as local councillors on the mainland, have been postponed to 18 December.
Pandani said that Zanzibaris deserved praise for expressing their “will in a peaceful and impressive manner.”
In the view of SEOM, this “will go a long way in contributing to the consolidation and strengthening of democracy not only in Zanzibar but also in the SADC region as a whole,” boding well for the nurturing of a culture of multipartysm as an essential instrument towards entrenchment of democracy.
Political parties, candidates and the population had also shown high levels of political tolerance and maturity, he said.
Concerns raised by voters whose names did not appear in the voters’ roll and in some cases the late posting of the roll to allow fast identification of names at polling stations did not in the least “demerit the whole electoral process and democracy in the Zanzibar Islands.”
SEOM deployed 22 team members in the two main islands of the archipelago, Unguja and Pemba, and interacted with all stakeholders, including other observer missions, political parties, civil society organisations, opinion-makers as well as the media.
SEOM is guided by the SADC Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections in the region, which were adopted in 2004 at a heads of state and government summit in Mauritius.
Since the adoption of the legally non-binding guidelines there have been elections in Botswana, Namibia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Mauritius. Only the latter two countries and the United Republic of Tanzania had enough time to align their countries’ electoral legislation with the regional principles.
Another observer mission from Commonwealth countries described the poll as “a good election,” noting that positive changes had been made in the law to provide greater transparency, such as counting of votes at polling stations.
Zanzibar’s own election commission (ZEC) found the elections “free and fair because everyone who wanted to vote had voted.”
ZEC chairman, Mussamu Yussuf Masway, flanked by his deputy, Augustine Ramadhan, said that the count had been orderly and final results would be announced within three days as prescribed by law.
As for five places were voters had not cast their vote because ballot papers for local councillors were missing, Masway said that voting would be repeated on 18 December.
Turn out at the polling stations was huge, he said, adding that it was still early to give a figure.
With 50 constituencies, Zanzibar had 509,906 registered voters.
There were six presidential candidates out of whom one is a female; 219 candidates to the House of Representatives (196 males and 23 females); and 340 ward and council candidates (28 of these are women). (SARDC)
