Tanzania's President Samia Suluhu Hassan holds a spear during her swearing-in ceremony in Dodoma on Nov. 3.PRESIDENTIAL PRESS UNIT/Reuters
Tanzania’s traditional allies, including Canada, are questioning the fairness of a disputed election that delivered a landslide victory of 98 per cent to President Samia Suluhu Hassan after the two biggest opposition parties were banned from the ballot.
Hundreds of people have been killed by Tanzania’s security forces in several days of protests against the Oct. 29 election, according to opposition activists and civil society groups. Authorities shut down the internet to hinder communications, imposed a nightly curfew and deployed soldiers on the streets to reinforce the police.
Ms. Hassan was sworn in for a second term on Monday under heavy security at a military parade ground, where members of the public were barred. Inauguration ceremonies are normally held at a national stadium with large crowds participating.
Ms. Hassan called for “unity and solidarity” across the country. “Life must continue,” she told the ceremony.
Protests in Tanzania enter second day after contentious election
Southern African election observers, who traditionally endorse almost all African elections, issued an unusual criticism of the Tanzanian election on Monday, concluding that it did not meet democratic standards.
In most areas, “voters could not express their democratic will,” the observers said in a preliminary statement, issued by Malawi politician Richard Msowoya on behalf of the mission from the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
Election authorities announced that 87 per cent of eligible voters had cast ballots, but their claim was widely seen as implausible and a sign of election rigging, since most polling stations had few voters on election day.
The SADC observers contradicted the official claims of a massive surge of voting for Ms. Hassan. “The mission noted a very low voter turnout in all polling stations observed,” their report said. “Some polling centres did not have voters at all.”
People protest in the streets of Arusha on election day.The Associated Press
Authorities also declared that nearly 32 million Tanzanians had voted for Ms. Hassan – more than twice as many as the 12.5 million who voted for her predecessor, John Magufuli, in the last election in 2020 − despite the fact that most opposition supporters are believed to have stayed home because their parties were banned.
Even before the voting day, the government had heavily tilted the playing field to favour Ms. Hassan, with the main opposition leader imprisoned on treason charges and other opposition activists targeted for abductions.
“We remain concerned that the run-up to the elections was marked by harassment, abductions and intimidation of opposition figures, journalists and civil society actors,” said the foreign ministers of Canada, Norway and Britain in a statement after the election.
“There are credible reports of a large number of fatalities and significant injuries as a result of the security response to protests,” the foreign ministers added.
Canada’s criticism of the election is significant because the federal government has poured billions of dollars into Tanzania since its independence in 1961, making the East African country one of the largest recipients of Canadian foreign aid. In total, Ottawa has provided $3.4-billion in international assistance to Tanzania, including $141-million in 2023-24, according to data from Global Affairs Canada.
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Western governments have generally seen Tanzania as a peaceful and stable partner in a continent where wars and coups are common. But this ignores the low-level repression that the Tanzanian state has exercised against the media and the opposition for many years, analysts say.
Since its independence, the country has been governed by a single ruling party, now known as Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM, the Revolutionary Party). The party has relentlessly tightened its grip on power, until it finally provoked massive protests this year.
Dan Paget, a professor and Tanzania expert at the University of Sussex, said it will be difficult for CCM to claim to be popular or legitimate rulers after the massive protests against it. The protests have been unprecedented in their national scale, their violence and their demands for political change, Mr. Paget told an online briefing on Monday.
Ms. Hassan, a former vice-president who came to power in 2021 after Mr. Magufuli’s death, was initially seen as a reformer who was loosening the restrictions on the media and opposition rallies. She portrayed herself as a soft-spoken motherly figure − but then she “unleashed terror with a smiling face,” said Joseph Oleshangay, a Tanzanian human rights lawyer, at the online briefing.
“Tanzania has been turned into a killing field, a crime scene,” he said.