Month: October 2020

Tanzania’s President John Magufuli has won the presidential election, the National Electoral Commission said late on Friday, a contest dismissed by the opposition as a “travesty” because of widespread irregularities.
Magufuli received 12.5 million votes in Wednesday’s election – or 85 percent – while his main challenger, Tundu Lissu of the Chadema party, got 1.9 million votes, or 13 percent, the electoral commission said.

The commission declares John Magufuli of CCM [Chama Cha Mapinduzi] who garnered the majority of votes as the winner in the presidential seat, said commission chairman Semistocles Kaijage.
Magufuli had been seeking a second five-year term and promised voters he will boost the economy by completing ambitious infrastructure projects he started in his first term.
Lissu previously said he will not accept the eventual election results.
The vote marked the most significant backsliding in Tanzania’s democratic credentials, Tanzania Elections Watch, a group of regional experts, said in an assessment released on Friday. It noted a heavy deployment of military and police whose conduct created a climate of fear.
The electoral process, so far, falls way below the acceptable international standards for holding free and fair elections, the group said.

Few international observers were allowed to watch the vote.
The US assistant secretary of state for African affairs, Tibor Nagy, said on Friday “we remain deeply concerned about reports of systematic interference in the democratic process”.
We continue to review credible allegations of the use of force against unarmed civilians, he said in a tweet.
Magufuli’s CCM party, a version of which has held power in Tanzania since independence from Britain in 1961, had already retained power in the semi-autonomous Indian Ocean archipelago of Zanzibar with 76 percent of the vote.
Dozens of opposition party officials and members were arrested in Zanzibar on Thursday and at least one is in hospital with severe injuries after allegations he was beaten by police, who have not commented on the incident.

The US embassy in the East African country said on Thursday there had been credible allegations of significant election-related fraud and intimidation in Wednesday’s vote for a president and politicians.

The election was marred by allegations of arrests of candidates and protesters, restrictions on agents of political parties to access polling stations, multiple voting, pre-ticking of ballots, and widespread blocking of social media.
Officials at the electoral commission were not immediately available for comment on allegations of irregularities.
On Wednesday, the commission denied allegations of fake ballots saying they were unofficial and unsubstantiated.
But observers say Tanzania’s reputation for democratic ideals is crumbling, with Magufuli accused of severely stifling dissenting voices in his first five-year term. Opposition political gatherings were banned in 2016, the year after he took office. Media outlets have been targeted.
Zitto Kabwe, leader of the main opposition party in Zanzibar, ACT-Wazalendo, and Chadema’s leader in parliament Freeman Mbowe were among dozens of opposition candidates who lost their seats to the ruling party. Africanewsguru update.

Tanzania’s president is poised to be declared the overwhelming winner of Wednesday’s election despite widespread allegations of fraud, while the governing party appears to have secured the two-thirds majority in parliament required to change the constitution.

Populist President John Magufuli has 83 percent of votes with 60 percent of ballots counted, the electoral commission said on Friday. The ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi party has won 194 seats in the 393-member parliament, while opposition parties have managed to win just two, with the leaders of the two main opposition parties losing their seats.
The United States has said, “Irregularities and the overwhelming margins of victory raise serious doubts about the credibility of the results.”
Main opposition presidential candidate Tundu Lissu of the CHADEMA party, who has received 14 percent of the vote so far, has rejected the election and called for protests.

The vote “marked the most significant backsliding in Tanzania’s democratic credentials”, Tanzania Elections Watch, a group of regional experts, said in an assessment released on Friday. It noted a heavy deployment of military and police whose conduct created a “climate of fear”.
“The electoral process, so far, falls way below the acceptable international standards” for holding free and fair elections, the group said.
The opposition alleges widespread irregularities including blackouts of internet and text messaging services, double voting, ballot box-seizing and the rejection of thousands of election observers from polling stations. Few international observers were allowed to watch the vote.

The electoral commission has denied allegations of irregularities in the East African nation that is one of Africa’s most populous countries and fastest-growing economies. Magufuli has pointed to the country’s achievement of lower-middle-income status as one reason he deserves another term.
But observers say Tanzania’s reputation for democratic ideals is crumbling, with Magufuli accused of severely stifling dissenting voices in his first five-year term. Opposition political gatherings were banned in 2016, the year after he took office. Media outlets have been targeted. Some candidates were arrested, prevented from campaigning or disqualified ahead of the vote. Africanewsguru update.

Human Rights Watch says justice and accountability for crimes carried out during Libya’s years-long conflict is “key” after the two main rival sides signed a ceasefire agreement.

Failure to see justice done will only hamper aspirations for a durable peace, warned the rights group’s senior Libya researcher, Hanan Salah, on Thursday.
Libya has been racked by violence since a NATO-backed uprising in 2011 overthrew and killed veteran leader Muammar Gaddafi.
Since then, the North African country has been dominated by armed groups, riven by local conflicts, and divided between two bitterly opposed administrations: The UN-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA), headed by Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj, and a rival administration in the east affiliated with renegade military commander Khalifa Haftar.

The GNA and Haftar’s self-styled Libyan National Army last Friday signed a permanent ceasefire accord after UN-sponsored talks in Geneva.
The deal came four months after Haftar’s Russian and Emirati-backed forces gave up their year-long attempt to seize the capital Tripoli, a battle that killed hundreds of people and displaced tens of thousands.
Dozens of Libyan delegates opened on Monday a political dialogue via video conference as a step towards holding elections after the landmark agreement.
But the ceasefire does not provide a clear commitment and a pathway to accountability for the serious crimes perpetrated by the foreign-backed warring parties, Salah noted.
This includes indiscriminate attacks that killed civilians, destruction of critical infrastructure, disappearances, arbitrary detentions, and unlawful killings, she said.
Another challenge according to the rights group, is the absence of any commitment in the deal to holding accountable fighters who stand to be demobilised and integrated into state security forces.
On Wednesday, a committee tasked by the GNA to search for missing people said on its Facebook page that a dozen bodies had been unearthed in newly found mass graves in the Tarhuna region.
This brings the total number of bodies allegedly discovered in mass graves in that area to 98 since the withdrawal in June of Haftar’s forces from western Libya. Africanewsguru update.

Tanzania’s main opposition presidential candidate on Thursday declared he would not recognise the election result as key seats fell to the governing party in a vote he said was marred by irregularities.
Counting was taking place across Tanzania and its semi-autonomous archipelago Zanzibar – which also elects its own president and legislators – where early results showed the opposition losing seats in some traditional strongholds.
President John Magufuli, who is seeking a second term, has the lead in more than a dozen constituency results announced by the Tanzania election commission.
His Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party has been in power since independence in 1961, but rights groups have decried a slide into “autocracy” over the past five years marked by the repression of the opposition.
Magufuli’s main challenger, the Chadema party candidate Tundu Lissu, declared the results trickling through “illegitimate” and urged his supporters to demonstrate peacefully while asking the international community not to recognise the outcome.

“Whatever happened yesterday was not an election, and thus we do not recognise it. We do not accept the result,” Lissu told reporters in Dar es Salaam, saying opposition election monitors had been barred from entering polling stations and faced other interference.
“What is being presented to the world is a complete fraud. It is not an election.”
The process was like “spitting in the face of democracy”, said Lissu, appearing to warn of unrest.
“Those in power are telling Tanzanians, ‘If you want change, look for it another way, not through the ballot box,’” he told reporters. “The message they are sending is, ‘Use force if you can… We won’t let you win through democracy.’”
He added, however, unlike the government, “we do not have the instruments of violence”.

Many across Africa have watched in dismay at what they have described as Tanzania’s abandonment of its long reputation of democratic ideals under the populist Magufuli.
The results of presidential elections cannot be contested in Tanzania, though the parliamentary outcome can be challenged.
Lissu, 52, returned to Tanzania in July after three years abroad recovering from 16 bullet wounds sustained in what he believes was a politically motivated assassination attempt.
His return reinvigorated an opposition demoralised by years of attacks, arrests and a ban on political rallies, with massive crowds seen throughout his campaign.

However, several opposition members of Parliament lost seats in long-held bastions, such as Chadema chairman and legislator Freeman Mbowe of Hai in the Kilimanjaro region.
In volatile Zanzibar, opposition presidential candidate Seif Sharif Hamad was arrested along with top leaders of the ACT-Wazalendo party, after he called for protests against election results there.
The opposition said 10 people were killed in the run-up to the vote, and Hamad decried the election as a “military exercise” overshadowed by violence and cheating.
“All the polling stations were surrounded by the military and armed forces,” said Hamad, who has accused the governing party of trying to steal every vote since multi-party democracy was introduced in 1995, and foreign observers have often agreed.
“People who came in to vote, some of them were given three, four ballot papers. When our party agents tried to ask why, they were thrown out,” he said.
“If we don’t get our rights through the ballot boxes then we have no choice but to demand this right through the streets.”
As Hamad and party leaders left to the protest they called, police fired tear gas at the group before bundling them into their truck.
“Presidential candidate Maalim Seif Sharif Hamad has been arrested while going to lead peaceful demonstrations against election results,” party official Salum Abdalla Bimani reported.
Truckloads of police and soldiers who had been patrolling during the election fanned out across the capital Stone Town, causing streets to empty out.
The feared “zombie” private militia of the ruling party swarmed the city, clad in black and with bandannas covering their faces.
Police did not immediately comment but confirmed at least 70 arrests in the past two days in election-related incidents. Streets into Zanzibar’s main city, Stone Town, were blocked.
“Tanzania in full blown one party dictatorship. We shall resist this,” ACT Wazalendo chair Zitto Kabwe tweeted, later alleging one of the arrested party members was badly beaten. “I ask the international community NOT to recognize this Tanzanian election.”
The East African nation’s electoral commission has denied allegations of voting irregularities in one of Africa’s most populous countries and fastest-growing economies. Election results could be announced on Friday.
The commission released results for 18 out of 264 constituencies showing Magufuli with the early lead.
The opposition and commentators had already voiced concern about the fairness of the election well ahead of polling.
“This year it was very different. There was lots of intimidation, violence, kidnapping. Two of our polling agents were kidnapped and very badly beaten,” said Tanzanian political analyst Aikande Kwayu, who supports the opposition and was on the ground in Hai.
“We knew it wouldn’t be free and fair, but nobody expected this,” she said.”I think we have moved from being a democracy to full authoritarianism. There will be no critical voice left. It is going to be a very difficult next five years.”
Tanzania’s electoral commission said on Wednesday it had not received any complaints about incidents of ballot stuffing.
Tanzania’s election, for which about 29 million people were registered to vote on the mainland and 560,000 in Zanzibar, took place largely without external monitors.
Most international media were unable to gain accreditation to cover voting on the mainland, and major social media networks were blocked, accessible only through virtual private networks (VPN).
Tanzania Elections Watch, a regional group of eminent people, expressed concerns about the credibility and conduct of the election, noting deadly violence on the eve of the vote in Zanzibar, massive disruption in internet and text messaging services, and the reported arrests of candidates on election day.
“Unfortunately, in Tanzania the announcement made by the National Electoral Commission is final,” the group’s co-chair Frederick Ssempebwa told a briefing, as results cannot be challenged in court. “There is no avenue for the aggrieved parties to air their views as the declaration of results could trigger a wave of instability. Africanewsguru update.

More than a week after the shooting of peaceful demonstrators in Lagos, Nigeria’s army has admitted its soldiers were deployed to restore order, but denied they opened fire on the gathered crowd protesting against police brutality.
At least 10 protesters were killed in the Lekki plaza shooting on October 20, according to Amnesty International.
The army had maintained that its troops were not at the site, but late on Tuesday a military spokesman, Major Osoba Olaniyi, said soldiers were sent to enforce a curfew. However, he denied that the troops shot at the protesters.
“At no time did soldiers of the Nigerian army open fire on any civilian,” Olaniyi said in a statement.

Olaniyi said soldiers were deployed on orders from the Lagos state government due to violence which led to several police stations being burnt, policemen killed, suspects in police custody released and weapons carted away.
Lagos Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, however, has said the state has no authority over the national army. He further said it is imperative to explain that no governor controls the rules of engagement of the army,” he wrote on Twitter the day after the shooting. “I have nevertheless instructed an investigation into the ordered and the adopted rules of engagement employed by the men of the Nigerian Army deployed to the Lekki Toll Gate.”

The military did not say how the soldiers intervened to curb unrest beyond denying that they shot protesters.
The military’s statement came shortly before Amnesty International’s Wednesday publication of an investigation that said it had tracked army vehicles from their Lagos barracks to Lekki Toll Gate using photographs and verified videos of the soldiers’ movements that had been posted on social media.
At 6:29pm (17:29 GMT) on October 20, two military vehicles were filmed leaving at Bonny Camp, while later footage shows four others that appear to be used by the military and police, according to the group.
“The incident that happened at Lekki Toll Gate has all the traits of the Nigerian authorities’ pattern of a cover-up whenever their defence and security forces commit unlawful killings,” said Osai Ojigho, Amnesty’s country director for Nigeria.
“The initial denials of the involvement of soldiers in the shooting was followed by the shameful denial of the loss of lives as a result of the military’s attack against the protests. Many people are still missing since the day of the incident, and credible evidence shows that the military prevented ambulances from reaching the severely injured in the aftermath.”
A Lagos-based soldier, who declined to be identified because this soldier was not authorised to speak to the media, told Reuters news agency that troops from the army 81st Division’s 65th Battalion, based at Bonny Camp, had fired on unarmed civilians at the toll gate.
Witnesses at Lekki described armed men in army fatigues arriving around 7pm (18:00 GMT) at the site of the peaceful protests, where demonstrators knelt to wave flags and sing the national anthem, before the men raised their guns and shot into the crowd.

A judicial panel began investigating the shooting on Tuesday. The panel is also investigating allegations of abuse against the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), an infamous police unit accused of extortion, extrajudicial killings, rape and torture.
Youth-led protests against police brutality erupted in early October after a video that allegedly showed a SARS operative killing a man was widely shared online.
After days of demonstrations, President Muhammadu Buhari’s government agreed to disband SARS, but the protests persisted with participants demanding sweeping reforms of the police force and action against corruption.
The shooting at Lekki plaza took place after authorities imposed the round-the-clock curfew ordering everyone to stay at home. For two days after that, Lagos saw widespread rioting.
Overall, Amnesty estimates that 56 people have died across the country since the protest began, including protesters and thugs who were allegedly hired by the authorities. Africanewsguru update.

Two men were found guilty and sentenced to death in Mali on Wednesday for the killing of more than two dozen people in attacks targeting foreigners in 2015.
After the announcement of the guilty verdict, Fawaz Ould Ahmed and his co-defendant Sadou Chaka were sentenced to death.

“The court finds you guilty of the facts you are accused of and does not grant you any mitigating circumstances,” said the president of the Bamako Criminal Court, Souley Maiga, after two days of hearings.
Ould Ahmed told the court he attacked a club in the capital Bamako in 2015, killing five people, in revenge for cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad by France’s Charlie Hebdo magazine.
A Frenchman, a Belgian and three Malians were killed in the March 2015 attack, when gunmen sprayed the Terrasse bar and restaurant with gunfire, one of two deadly attacks targeting Westerners in Bamako that year.

“We are the ones who carried it out: Al-Mourabitoune,” said Ould Ahmed, who is also known as “Ibrahim 10”, referring to a prominent armed group in the Sahel.
“We are not ashamed, we are proud,” he said.”It was revenge for the prophet after what they did at Charlie Hebdo – it’s the photos, the caricatures.”
He added: “And sadly, it’s not over. It’s still continuing,” in an apparent reference to French President Emmanuel Macron’s defence of the right to mock religion after a teacher was murdered near Paris for showing his pupils the cartoons.
Macron’s comments have stoked anger in the Muslim world with protests and boycotts of French products in several Arab countries.
Ould Ahmed and two other men, Malian nationals Sadou Chaka and Abdoulbaki Abdramane Maiga, were charged both for the La Terrasse attack and for another assault in November 2015, when gunmen took guests and staff hostage at the 190-room Radisson Blu hotel.
Ould Ahmed is allegedly a lieutenant of the notorious one-eyed Algerian rebel leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar. He is accused of personally shooting the victims at La Terrasse with an assault rifle.
Ould Ahmed said he went into the toilet at the club to don a hood and get out his assault rifle. He described how he aimed at “white people” and gunned down one man in the back as the victim was attempting to run for his car.
The defendant said felt “nothing” when he fired his weapon, but apologised for the deaths of the Malian victims. He said he was surprised he was able to return home by taxi without a hitch after the attack.
In January 2015, gunmen in Paris killed 12 people at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a weekly satirical magazine, for the publication of the Prophet Muhammad caricatures. Millions of people in France took part in demonstrations in support of the stricken publication.
Ould Ahmed, who is also accused of masterminding the Radisson Blu attack, was arrested in April 2016 by Malian police in Bamako, where he had arrived more than a week earlier to prepare further assaults, according to a source close to the investigation.
The siege left 20 people dead, including 14 foreigners. The trial in Bamako was a rare event in the Sahel, where weak and impoverished states are floundering in the face of a bloody revolt by armed groups.
The rebellion in Mali first emerged in the north in 2012, before spreading to the centre of the country and from there to neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger. Africanewsguru update.