Zanzibar talks boost hopes for peaceful election
by Katrina Manson

Reuters    Translate This Article
25 December 2009

STONE TOWN, Zanzibar (Reuters) - A rapprochement between Zanzibar's ruling party and the opposition bodes well for a more peaceful election next year on the archipelago where ballots have often turned violent, the president has said.

Polls on the semi-autonomous islands off Tanzania were marred by bloodshed and allegations of vote rigging in 2000 and 2005, and three sets of reconciliation talks between the two main political parties had previously stalled.

Officials from the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party and opposition Civic United Front (CUF) are cagey about the details of any deal, but a historic handshake between their two leaders last month looked to be a step in the right direction.

Speaking to Reuters in Stone Town on the sidelines of a democracy conference on Tuesday, President Amani Karume said both sides had joined the talks out of good will and were doing their best to avoid any turmoil at the next election, which is expected at the end of October 2010.

'Unfortunately during the previous elections we didn't have such arrangements as we do now. There was a lot of suspicion amongst the different political parties here and especially the CCM and CUF leadership, members and so on,' Karume said, adding that any repeat of the poll violence would be a 'catastrophe'.

Stone Town, Zanzibar's capital, is an opposition stronghold where bunting in the CUF party colours is strewn across a jigsaw of narrow 19th century streets and alleyways.

While dominant in the capital, Maalim Seif Sharif Hamad's party's real heartland is the more remote northern island of Pemba, where many of its supporters are unofficially boycotting election registration.

The Zanzibar Electoral Commission (ZEC) says 41 percent of some 550,000 eligible voters have registered so far, but that only a third have in Pemba. A second and final round of registration will conclude in April.

ATTEMPTED FRAUD

The ZEC said attempted fraud was already running high, with many voters registering two or three times in different places.

'We try to make sure that people have the right to vote only once but the people try to play with the system,' Ali Salum Kassim, director of elections at ZEC, told Reuters, indicating a stack of attempts to register multiple times by voters.

The steamy islands, where more than half the population live below the poverty line, is suffering a crippling power cut expected to last to late January. It relies on tourism for more than 25 percent of its gross domestic product, more than 60,000 jobs and 70 percent of its foreign exchange.

'So many people don't go to register because of these shortcomings,' Hamad, the CUF leader, told Reuters.

He said the details of the agreement reached in November with Karume's CCM would only be made public bit by bit.

'You will see steps being taken one by one,' he said. 'At every stage there are spoilers if you reveal everything.'

Karume would not rule out the possibility of forming a government of national unity with CUF ahead of the election, which analysts said could delay the poll. The CCM says such a deal could go ahead only after a national referendum, which the opposition believes would not be held fairly.

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Global Good News comment:

Global Good News recognizes the country has a ways to go to reaching ideal administration, but views the possibility of peaceful election as a positive trend.

'Prevention of problems through evolution-based, perfect administration through Natural Law is the characteristic of administration of Cosmic Intelligence, the Government of Nature, which functions from that self-referral level where problems can never exist.

'When all governments in the world rise to this level of perfect administration, then the world will be in accord with the same level of order that prevails in Nature. This will be the realization of the supreme quality of administration.

'Diversity of country, culture, language, climate, and religion will continue; man-made constitutions of governments will continue; diverse governments will maintain their sovereignty just as each galaxy in the universe maintains its sovereignty; all sovereign governments will maintain their different identities just as all the galaxies maintain their individuality in the grand cosmic wholeness of the ever-expanding universe-they will all remain automatically aligned with the one unified Cosmic Administration, which maintains the unity of all diversity.'

—Maharishi

Celebrating Perfection in Administration, Creating Invincible India (418-page publication)

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