Big puzzle of Tanzania’s two sets of election rules

In Tanzania, the tradition has always been to hold the two exercises at least one year apart, regardless of expenses involved, with the Ministry of Regional Administration and Local Governments (Tamisemi) supervising the former and the electoral commission overseeing the latter.

A notably baffling aspect of this historic arrangement has been that each of these entities is allowed to apply its own set of rules for listing voters, vetting and approving candidates, supervising ballot box procedures, counting the votes right down to announcing the final tally.

The National Assembly sought to clear up this apparent confusion through a series of changes to the election laws that were endorsed in February this year, under pressure from reformist activists.

However, in practice, the contradictions have remained and are looming larger as the latest civic poll approaches.

Tanzania’s 1977 Constitution, which is still in use restricts the electoral commission’s responsibilities to supervising and coordinating all aspects of the presidential, parliamentary and ward councillor elections.

But it makes no mention of the lower grassroots elections, or who should be in charge of conducting them. Until February, this was covered by two separate pieces of legislation for local government district and urban authorities, which named Tamisemi as the main overseer of the local government elections.

These laws were repealed by the introduction of the National Electoral Commission (NEC) Act of 2024, replacing the previous National Elections Act and re-establishing the commission under a new name — Independent National Electoral Commission (Inec).

The new law also formally shifted the onus of managing the local government elections from Tamisemi to Inec. Under Section 10 (1) (c) of the new law, Inec’s functions will henceforth include “supervising and coordinating the conduct of local government elections in villages, mtaa and kitongoji subject to procedures to be prescribed in the law to be enacted by parliament.”

Mtaa and kitongoji in this sense mean residential groups of 10 to 12 neighbouring households. Clause 26 of the law’s miscellaneous provisions section also states that the commission will “make regulations and guidelines, and issue directives for effective implementation of its functions.”

But, since the new NEC Act came into force following President Samia Suluhu Hassan’s assent in March, no progress has been made in enacting the second law spelling out the “procedures” for INEC to conduct the neighbourhood election.

Both Chadema and ACT Wazalendo, Tanzania’s two main opposition parties, have expressed misgivings over the delay in tabling the law for parliamentary approval in time for this year’s poll, describing it as a ploy by the ruling CCM party to ensure it retains the upper hand in this election.

And on October 28, Tanzania’s High Court threw out a petition brought by three private citizens challenging Tamisemi’s continued supervision of the civic election despite the new law not giving it the mandate to fill the gap caused by the delay.

Judge David Ngunyale ruled that in the absence of the supporting law, local government elections oversight should remain unchanged from the previous legislation even though it had been repealed.

His ruling added fresh fuel to the long-standing debate on what type of impact Tamisemi and Inec’s overlapping roles have on ensuring the country’s entire elections processes move smoothly from grassroots to national levels.

An early sign of the kind of complications inherent in the present scenario was Tamisemi’s decision to sign up voters afresh for the upcoming civic ballot instead of using the Permanent National Voters Register that Inec began updating in July ahead of the general election next year.

The ministry, which operates directly under the President’s Office, last week published record voter registration figures of 31.28 million Tanzanians for the November 27 poll, with the numbers in at least five regions exceeding its own estimates based on Tanzania’s 2022 national census.

By contrast, Inec approximates its own registry update to yield an 18.7 percent increase in eligible voters from 29.75 million in 2020 to 34.7 million by 2025, after some names are removed for reasons such as death or renouncement of Tanzanian citizenship.

The electoral commission announced that it had purchased about 6,000 new, Android-programmed biometric voter registration (BVR) kits for the job, and also set up an online system for previously registered citizens to update their personal details themselves via computer or smartphone before visiting registration centres in person to obtain voter identification cards.

Tamisemi conducted its voters registration operation manually and on-the-spot, the results being delivered amid widespread claims of its registry books being padded with ineligible voters such as persons known to be dead and schoolchildren under the legal voting age of 18.

Tanzania’s 2022 national census figures indicated a total 61.4 million population across all demographics, including 28.6 million below the age of 16.

In the wake of the voter registration controversy, public attention in Tanzania has now switched to how the rest of the civic polls preparations will go, what will transpire on voting day, and the aftermath.