Tanzania Opposition Leaders Freed After Calling Vote Protest

Dar es Salaam, Nov 3 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 4th Nov, 2020 ) :Several Tanzanian opposition leaders were released on bail Tuesday after being arrested for calling protests against elections they say was riddled with fraud, the Chadema opposition party said.

Last week President John Magufuli won a second term in office with 84 percent of the vote -- while his long-ruling party took 97 percent of seats in parliament -- in elections which the opposition and diplomats have dismissed as a sham.

After the landslide results were announced, Chadema and fellow opposition party ACT-Wazalendo called for fresh elections as well as mass protests starting Monday.

But police swiftly arrested the parties' leaders, while a heavy security presence deterred potential protesters and the demonstrations never took place.

Chadema's defeated presidential candidate Tundu Lissu, who officially won just 13 percent of the vote, was detained on Monday for two hours of questioning before being released.

On Tuesday the party tweeted that its chairman Freeman Mbowe and central committee members Godbless Lema and Boniface Jacob had been released on bail.

ACT-Wazalendo's leader Zitto Kabwe, who was arrested earlier Tuesday while visiting Mbowe at a police station in the economic capital Dar es Salaam, was also released, Chadema official John Mnyika tweeted.

Kabwe had called for a panel of African leaders to investigate "large-scale irregularities" during the October 28 elections.

US Ambassador Donald Wright welcomed the release of the opposition figures.

"Now @MagufuliJP should take additional steps to ease tensions and restore faith in Tanzania's democracy," he tweeted. "Free all political prisoners, investigate election irregularities and restore the internet." Even before the vote, few had believed the polls would be free and fair, after Tanzania's steady decline into autocracy during Magufuli's first term.

But even seasoned observers have been stunned by what they see as a brazen effort to completely rid the country of any opposition.

Murithi Mutiga, an analyst from the International Crisis Group (ICG) think tank, said the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party -- which has ruled since independence in 1961 -- had at least previously "cared about its image".

"Now what we have seen under Magufuli, and what was by all accounts a sham election, is a real regression to a style of politics that is completely alien to Tanzania," he said.