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joinafrica features |
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Tanzania: FRIST WOMAN IN PRESIDENTIAL RACE
The National Electoral Commission announced 10 candidates,
amongst them the first woman gunning to succeed President
Benjamin Mkapa when he completes his second and last five-year
term in office in November.
Commission Chairman Lewis Makame said 11 of 13 candidates who
collected nomination forms had submitted them by Saturday's 1600
(1300 GMT) deadline, but one was disqualified and two failed to
show up.
Makame said the candidate for Chama Cha Ustawi Tanzania, James
Mapalala, failed to secure the mandatory endorsement of at least
200 people from 10 of the country's 26 regions by the deadline.
Makame also said two candidates who collected presidential forms
never showed up by the deadline.
While it may be too early to predict the outcome of the
elections with any degree of certainty, local political
observers are already saying Kikwete is the favourite. The
virtually unknown Anne Senkoro, 43, of the Progress Party of
Tanzania, is being given little chance of winning, but has been
hailed for joining this traditionally male-dominated race for
the nation's top post. Two other women - the Zanibaris Naila
Jiddawi of the NCCR and Rukia Omar Kiota of the Tanzanian Labour
Party (TLP)- are running mates.
Also in the running are Ibrahim Lipumba of CUF, which is the
strongest party on the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba, and
Augustine Mrema of the TLP. Both are veteran politicians who
lost to the Mkapa in the 1995 and 2000 polls.
In a bid to improve their chances of success, an alliance of
five small opposition parties has agreed to field a single
presidential candidate. He is Edmund Mvungi, a human rights
activist and law lecturer.
Others in the race for the top government office are Freeman
Mbowe of Chama Cha Demokrasi na Maendeleo; Christopher Mtikila
of the Democratic Party; Emmanuel Makaidi of the National League
for Democracy; Leonard Shayo of Demokrasia Makini; and Peter
Kyara of Sauti Ya Umma.
The polls on 30 October will be the third since pluralism was
restored in 1992. Multiparty democracy was banned in 1965, three
years after the country's independence from Britain.
Only CCM - formed in 1977 when the Tanzanian African National
Union and Afro Shirazi party merged - has managed to name
candidates in all the 232 parliamentary constituencies and 2,554
wards in Tanzania. Under the law, 30 percent of parliamentary
seats are reserved for women; thus hundreds of women are
currently jostling for a place in the national assembly that
sits in the central city of Dodoma.
[ENDS]
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