Magufuli orders police chief to act on threats against defector

DODOMA

Chama Cha Mapinduzi presidential candidate Dr John Magufuli has ordered Dodoma Regional Police Commander David Misime to bring to book all those who have been sending intimidating messages to Mr Khalid Zoya, former Chadema campaign manager for a Dodoma Urban seat candidate.

Dr Magufuli issued the order Wednesday when campaigning at the Jamhuri Stadium in the region.

“He has told me that he now receives messages (SMSs) that threaten him. I hope that you, in your capacity as the RPC are more experienced to deal with this. The good thing is that you are good at what you do,” Dr Magufuli told Mr Misime.

Dr Magufuli issued the order moments after Mr Zoya had declared crossing over to CCM at the rally.

UNNERVED
Speaking at the campaign rally, Mr Zoya promised to move around all wards of the constituency to ensure that Dr Magufuli and CCM’s parliamentary seat candidate Antony Mavunde were elected in the forthcoming General Election.

However, Chadema’s Dodoma regional chairman Jella Mambo said they had got word of Mr Zoya’s defection to CCM since three weeks ago, and they were not bothered.

He said even the top party leadership was informed.
“This is his trend, he was once a CCM member before crossing to Chadema. Now, he has gone back to CCM. We wish him well. Chadema will never shake because of this. He added nothing to the party,” Mr Mambo said.

Meanwhile, the Opposition party, Chadema, wants the National Electoral Commission to come out clean over the planned deployment of a new software to tally the presidential votes in the October 25 General Election.

TAKEN BY SURPRISE
Chadema said the confidence of all the political parties in the system was critical for the credibility of the outcome.

The party, whose candidate Mr Edward Lowassa is being backed for the presidency in a coalition of three other parties, also asked NEC to release the cleaned up national voters’ register as the polls body was behind schedule by precedence.

Addressing a press conference on Wednesday in Dar es Salaam, the opposition party’s deputy Secretary General (Mainland) Mr John Mnyika said they were taken by surprise by a news report revealing that the polls body was testing a new software that it planned to use in this year’s elections.

Mr John Mnyika said his party and the opposition coalition, Ukawa, have smelt a rat over the new software should NEC not come out clean over the intention to change the way the presidential results would be announced in this year’s election.

“NEC should form a team involving both NEC and political stake holders so that they can participate in verifying the new software that will be used in releasing election results,” he said.

FREE AND FAIR ELECTIONS
He added: “We want Mr Lubuva to show us the software so that our IT experts could identify the kind of system it is and how safe it would be from interference.”

The Nation Media Group’s Citizen reported last week how NEC was planning to deploy the use of new technology in this year’s elections, with the procurement of the new software among the corner stones of its plan to make the elections free and fair.

The Citizen then reported that NEC would use the unidentified software to receive and tally the presidential vote results.

According to NEC, the system, while an improvement of the old way of doing things, would ensure real time relay of the results as they trickled in from the far flung regions and also enable NEC to announce the final results quickly.

Mr Lubuva and the Director of Elections Mr Ramadhani Kailima both confirmed the agency was testing the software but did not want to discuss finer details such as where it was bought.

Mr Kailima said the new technology would enable them finish the work of releasing the presidential results within two days instead of seven that is provided for in law. He assured the public that they will be open and transparent in its use.

Mr Lubuva also repeated the same assurance in an interview with The Citizen, saying the election stake holders will be invited to take a look once the test-run was finally completed.

I WILL BE IMPARTIAL
Part of the promised changes is for the posting of presidential vote results outside each polling centre. The results were in the past only announced by electoral officials at the district level.

NEC has also said it will not allow the transportation of ballot boxes from the more than 72,000 polling stations to central locations on the material election day, with Mr Lubuva pleading with voters to turn out in large numbers to vote for their preferred candidates knowing that their collective will be respected.

He said NEC will not favour any political party.

The use of the new technology in this year’s election started with the biometric voter registration in which some 23.7 million people have registered as voters.

The malfunctioning of the electronic voter tallying during neighbouring Kenya’s General Election in 2013 was being touted as a case study to avoid a similar saga in the Tanzania election.

It was however still not known how different the NEC fronted software may be from the Kenyan tallying electronic system.