TANZANIA’s main opposition party, CHADEMA, has officially endorsed Seif Shariff Hamad for the presidency of Zanzibar. Hamad vies on the ACT-Wazalendo ticket, but CHADEMA said it was withdrawing its own candidate, Issa Mohammed, to pave way for a fruitful cooperation between the two parties in a bid to oust CCM from power.
CHADEMA’s decision was reached during its Central Committee meeting held on Friday in Dar es Salaam; and its chairman, Freeman Mbowe, called a press conference to brief the media on the deliberations on Saturday afternoon.
Hamad is Zanzibar’s strongest presidential candidate who, according to statistics by the Zanzibar Electoral Commission (ZEC), won the last presidential election (2015) before it was stolen by force.
The statistics had shown that Hamad had garnered 207,847 votes against CCM’s Mohamed Shein who had 182,011. But the ruling party used police to hijack the electoral commission chairman and forced him to annul the results – which was unlawful and unconstitutional.
It is expected that ACT-Wazalendo will follow suit with a reciprocal action to endorse CHADEMA’s Tundu Lissu for the Union presidency in the same spirit and determination to defeat CCM, which runs the same regime that has been in power since independence in 1961.
