{"id":11679,"date":"2025-10-31T16:31:43","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T16:31:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ahead.africa\/?p=11679"},"modified":"2026-03-04T23:30:40","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T23:30:40","slug":"a-toast-to-flawed-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ahead.africa\/en\/a-toast-to-flawed-elections\/","title":{"rendered":"Tanzania: A toast to flawed elections"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Photo credits: \u00a9 Paul Kagame via Flickr<\/a> (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everything pointed in a troubling direction ahead of Tanzania\u2019s October 2025 elections, suggesting a process with little genuine legitimacy. Several developments underscored this trend:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. The Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party has been in power since independence<\/strong>.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Ahead of the elections, major opposition parties were disqualified from participating<\/strong>, including CHADEMA and ACT\u2011Wazalendo, <\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Arbitrary arrests, assaults, extrajudicial killings, and enforced disappearances<\/strong> targeted opposition leaders, civil society actors, journalists, and other dissenting voices.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  4. Tanzania was downgraded from \u201cPartly Free\u201d in 2020 to \u201cNot Free\u201d<\/strong> in the 2025 Freedom in the World<\/em> report.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  5. Laws <\/strong>such as the Media Services Act, Cybercrimes Act, and Political Parties Act are being leveraged to restrict civic space.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  6. Groups promoting voter education and mobilisation<\/strong> face scrutiny and risk public targeting.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  7. Cases of selective accreditation<\/strong> have been granted to local election observer <\/strong>groups.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  8. Internet censorship<\/strong> and government-designated \u201conline patrols\u201d actively suppress dissent.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    As expected, voting day confirmed these troubling trends. With voters intimidated by curfews and internet shutdowns, and a pervasive climate of fear, the election clearly served the interests of those in power\u2014not the people. By any standard, the vote was far from free or fair. E-HORN observers documented these irregularities and have proposed concrete steps to restore democratic space and strengthen future electoral processes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
    Read E-HORN’s Preliminary Statement on Tanzania’s 2025 General Elections<\/strong><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Under curfews and internet shutdowns, the election served the powerful, not the people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":11691,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"blog","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[48],"grantees":[87],"partner":[11,54],"region":[55,58],"class_list":["post-11679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-countries","tag-recommendations","grantees-tanzania-bora-initiative","partner-e-horn","partner-elog-kenya","region-east-africa","region-tanzania"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ahead.africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ahead.africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ahead.africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ahead.africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ahead.africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11679"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/ahead.africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12449,"href":"https:\/\/ahead.africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11679\/revisions\/12449"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ahead.africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ahead.africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ahead.africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ahead.africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11679"},{"taxonomy":"grantees","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ahead.africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/grantees?post=11679"},{"taxonomy":"partner","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ahead.africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/partner?post=11679"},{"taxonomy":"region","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ahead.africa\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/region?post=11679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}