Tanzania’s national electoral commission on Saturday accepted the nomination papers of Luhaga Mpina, a senior politician from the second largest opposition party, enabling him to contest next month’s presidential election following a court order.<\/p>\n
A high court ruling on Thursday overturned a previous decision by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) that had prevented Mpina from lodging his electoral nomination papers after he was\u00a0disqualified.<\/p>\n
His disqualification meant incumbent President Samia Suluhu Hassan, who has been in office since March 2021, would potentially face opposition only from smaller parties in the October 29 election.<\/p>\n
Mpina, who is the top candidate for the Alliance for Change and Transparency (ACT-Wazalendo) party, successfully challenged the decision to disqualify him by the Office of Registrar of Political Parties, citing complaints that his party had failed to comply with nomination procedures.<\/p>\n
Addressing a media briefing after lodging his nomination papers, Mpina said political parties were constitutionally guaranteed to operate in the East African country.<\/p>\n
“Opposition politicians and opposition parties are not treasonous and criminals. There is no need to use authorities to punish political parties,” Mpina said in the capital Dar es Salaam.<\/p>\n
Earlier on Saturday, the chairperson of INEC accepted his nomination as presidential candidate for ACT-Wazalendo.<\/p>\n
Opposition parties face an uphill battle trying to dislodge Hassan and her ruling Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party, amid a government crackdown on rivals.<\/p>\n
Leading opposition party CHADEMA was disqualified in April from contesting the election after failing to sign the electoral code of conduct as part of its call for reforms.<\/p>\n
Party chairperson Tundu Lissu is in jail after being charged with\u00a0treason\u00a0amid criticism of Hassan’s human rights record.<\/p>\n
Hassan has denied the accusations and said her government was committed to protecting human rights.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tanzania’s national electoral commission on Saturday accepted the nomination papers of Luhaga Mpina, a senior politician from the second largest opposition party, enabling him to contest next month’s presidential election following a court order. A high court ruling on Thursday overturned a previous decision by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) that had prevented Mpina […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17786,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,2362,33],"tags":[4412,4411,131],"class_list":["post-17785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-east-africa","category-featured","category-politics","tag-independent-national-electoral-commission-inec","tag-luhaga-mpina","tag-tanzania"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17785"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17785\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}