As Tanzania entered into vote counting yesterday, the opposition has come out to claim that there have been high incidences of vote rigging during the national general elections.
Over 29 million people were registered to vote in over 80,115 polling stations across the country. There were over 15 different presidential candidates that were contesting for the biggest office in the country with current president John Magufuli seeking a second term of 5 years.
President John Magufuli called upon all the countrymen and women to take up their right to head to the polls and vote for their next leaders.
“I call on Tanzanians to come out in large numbers today and vote for the decision that everyone has in their hearts. I must also emphasize the need to preserve peace as a nation, because life will go on after the elections. May God bless all the voters and may God bless Tanzania”, said Magufuli shortly after casting his ballot.
Despite the president calling for a peaceful election process in the East African country that has been highly regarded to be peaceful and democratic during elections, the opposition has come out to claim that ballot tampering has been witnessed across many different parts of the country.
President Magufuli’s main challenger Tundu Lissu has calimed that he has received several reports that there has been widespread tampering with the votes where some ballots have been seen pre-ticked.
In semi-autonomous Zanzibar, the opposition said its members had found ballots pre-marked for President Magufuli.
“We have seen a lot of problems in this election. One of them is that we have discovered in different polling stations. We have seen these ballot papers, and we have caught some people with these papers. One person is given maybe ten or fifteen, or up to twenty and there are some people who came today in the morning to report to us that they had been given ten votes to vote at the time”, said Muhene Said Rashid, deputy secretary of the elections for the opposition party ACT Wazalendo.
Tanzania’s National Election Commission (NEC) chairman Judge Semistocles Kaijage dismissed the reports of pre-ticked ballot as false, according to The Citizen, a local newspaper.
The director of the National Electoral Commission (CNE), Wilson Mahela, explained that they would begin to count the results of the presidential election on Wednesday night, as they continue to meet at all the polling stations in the country.
“We expect that they will announce (the results) of the other votes for the members of Parliament and the councilmen any time on tonight, after the closing” of the voting centers, Mahela said.
Long considered a haven of stability in East Africa, say Tanzania has seen the stifling and a crackdown on freedom of speech under the 60-year-old Magufuli and his Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party, which has been in power since 1961.
The Tanzania Elections Watch has released its findings from what they have been able to see from across the different polling stations during the general elections.
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