Copyright scmp
Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan has won a landslide election victory, official results showed on Saturday, after key candidates were jailed or barred from a vote that has triggered days of violent protests. The final result showed Hassan won 97.66 per cent of the vote, dominating every constituency, the electoral commission announced on state television. A quick swearing-in ceremony would take place on Saturday, state TV said. At stake for the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party was its decades-long grip on power amid the rise of charismatic opposition figures who hoped to lead the country towards political change. Still, a landslide victory is unheard of in the region. Only President Paul Kagame, the authoritarian leader of Rwanda, regularly wins by a landslide. The main opposition party, Chadema, says hundreds of people have been killed by security forces since protests broke out on election day on Wednesday. Hassan was elevated from vice-president on the sudden death of her predecessor, John Magufuli, in 2021. She has faced opposition from parts of the army and Magufuli’s allies, and sought to cement her position with an emphatic win, analysts say. Rights groups say she oversaw a “wave of terror” in the east African nation ahead of the vote, including a string of high-profile abductions that escalated in the final days. Chadema was barred from taking part in the election and its leader put on trial for treason. Despite a heavy security presence, election day descended into chaos as crowds took to the streets across the country, tearing down her posters and attacking police and polling stations, leading to an internet shutdown and curfew. A Chadema spokesman said on Friday that “around 700” people had been killed, based on figures gathered from a network checking hospitals and health clinics. A security source and diplomat in Dar es Salaam both said that deaths were “in the hundreds”. Hassan has not made any public statement since the unrest began. Her government denies using “excessive force” but has blocked the internet and imposed a tight lockdown and curfew nationwide, making it hard to get any information. News websites have not been updated since early Wednesday and journalists are not allowed to operate freely in the country. UN chief Antonio Guterres was “deeply concerned” about the situation in Tanzania, “including reports of deaths and injuries during the demonstrations”, his spokesman said in a statement on Friday. Much public anger has been directed at Hassan’s son, Abdul Halim Hafidh Ameir, accused of overseeing the crackdown. There have been unconfirmed reports of the army siding with protesters in some places, but army chief Jacob Mkunda came out strongly on Hassan’s side on Thursday, calling the protesters “criminals”. Foreign Minister Mahmoud Thabit Kombo said on Friday that his government had “no figures” on any dead. “Currently, no excessive force has been used,” he said in an interview with Al Jazeera. “There’s no number until now of any protesters killed.” The political manoeuvring by Tanzanian authorities is remarkable even in a country where single-party rule has been the norm since the advent of multiparty politics in 1992. Government critics point out that previous leaders tolerated opposition while maintaining a firm grip on power, whereas Hassan is accused of leading with an authoritarian style that defies youth-led democracy movements elsewhere in the region. But Tanzania is different, an outlier in the region. A version of the governing CCM party, which maintains ties with the Communist Party of China, has ruled Tanzania since its independence from Britain in 1961, a streak that Hassan extends with her victory. CCM is fused with the state, effectively in charge of the security apparatus and structured in such a way that new leaders emerge every five or 10 years. Hassan’s orderly transition after Magufuli’s death not long after the start of his second term sustained Tanzania’s reputation as an oasis of political stability and relative peace, a major reason for CCM’s considerable support across the country, especially among rural voters. Additional reporting by Associated Press
