CCM flexes its muscles

                   Lolensia Bukwimba (CCM) celebrates her victory with supporters

(Photo by The Citizen)

In the last two months, a couple of polls made everyone excited after they seemed to indicate that CCM's stranglehold on power may be slowly eroding. I wrote about this here and here. The two by-elections held recently presented a perfect opportunity to test this proposition. And in both cases, CCM proved that the talks of a crisis were way premature. 

In the Magogoni by-election in Zanzibar, the ruling party's candidate, Asha Mohamed Hillal, secured a convincing 58% of the vote to defeat her Civic United Front (CUF) opponent. And at Busanda, Lolensia Bukwimba won a comfortable 10-point victory against Chadema's Finias Magesa. In the latter case, a strong showing in the rural areas managed to guarantee victory for CCM while Chadema's support seems to have been confined mostly within the urban centres.

What do these two results tell us? Put it simply, the ruling party still retains the trust and confidence of most Tanzanians. All this talk of CCM struggling and so on is for the most part a media construction. As Dr. Mohamed Bakari of The University of Dar-es-Salaam (UDSM) told The Citizen:

CCM still enjoyed wide support in rural areas, adding that the ruling party took full advantage of this fact in elections. 

He said CCM's win was not entirely surprising as media reports on campaigns concentrated to what was happening in semi-urban areas.

The opposition were unable to get through to these rural voters. Since 80% of Tanzanians are a rural people, to win, they have to come up with a coherent vision that will appeal to them. As of now, they don't have one. Hence, the defeats in Magogoni and Busanda. And until they do so, CCM will exploit this vulnerability all the way to another landslide in 2010. 

But one thing that I think all of us ought to celebrate is the fact that we have elected two more women to parliament. Our democracy is certainly better for it. 

CCM definitely in trouble

So claims a new poll. From The Citizen, the key findings:

A poll by the Research and Education for Democracy in Tanzania (Redet) shows that the ruling party's popularity has declined by half, from 60 per cent in 2006 to 32.6 per cent last year. 

Redet principal researcher, Dr Bernadeta Killian said the survey indicates that public support for opposition parties grew from 18 per cent in 2006 to 27 per cent in 2008.

On President Kikwete, the poll shows that while he remained popular, confidence in his leadership fell from 90.1 per cent in 2006, to 79.4 per cent in 2007. 

It dropped to 78.5 per cent in the latest poll. The President lost huge ground on public confidence with the percentage of those who said they did not trust him jumping from 7.8 per cent in 2006 to 19.3 per cent in the November 2008 poll. 

Now, polls can be notoriously unreliable. Ask Hillary Clinton. They don't necessarily foretell which way the electorate is going to vote. What they can provide, however, is a snapshot at a given moment of what voters are thinking. And the two most recent surveys (Read my review of the Steadman poll here), tell us that while the President remains enormously popular, his party is struggling. And the fall of support for the ruling party seems to have translated into significant gains for the opposition. 

What does this mean? I think for the first time since the beginning of multiparty democracy in this country, voters are tentatively expressing a desire for divided government. They are clearly not yet sold on the opposition as a viable governing alternative. But i think it is reasonable to extrapolate from these two studies that they want a more powerful opposition presence in parliament. They are giving a serious listen to what the opposition are offering. The question then becomes, will the opposition take advantage of this opportunity or will they continue to be ill-defined, disorganised and listless, the way they have been in the last 15 years? The next 18 months should give us an answer.

CCM in trouble?

 President Kikwete speaking to voters at a CCM rally 

A few days ago, Steadman Group, the research and media monitoring firm which does a lot of work in sub-saharan Africa, released a poll on Tanzania that made for some interesting reading. From the Daily News:

President Jakaya Kikwete remains outstanding in leaders' popularity rating by 62 percent...The research findings show that the National Chairman of the Civic United Front (CUF), Prof. Ibrahim Lipumba and the National Chairman of Chadema, Mr. Freeman Mbowe, are the president's closest contenders, tying at 14 percent in popularity rating.

After a difficult year politically, State House will justifiably feel emboldened by this news. And by any standard these numbers are impressive. If Mr. Kikwete's approval rating remain this high going into the general election in 2010, it should translate into another huge landslide for him and his party. 

Nevertheless, it is worth noting that his current popularity is a significant drop from when he was first elected in 2005. Four years ago he won 80% of the popular vote to become Tanzania's fourth President. So looking at the poll from this perspective, it does suggest a significant loss of trust in Mr. Kikwete's ability to govern. This is why only 41% of voters approve of the government's overall performance in the last twelve months. While it hasn't yet gnawed on the personal popularity of the President, it definitely will if voters don't notice any improvements in the coming year.

The poll also implies that if the elections were held today, the opposition parties would garner over 30% of the vote.  If something close to this were to ever happen here it would completely transform politics in this country. It would probably mean a more effective opposition in parliament and hopefully give a much needed jolt to Tanzania's democracy. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. A year is a long time in politics and with the opposition as it is currently constituted, such a change is still unlikely. However, for the first time since the multiparty system was introduced, a significant bloc of voters are signaling that they are prepared to listen to an alternative. Whether they will in the end actually vote for one is difficult to predict. But it is still a significant development. How the political parties deal with this new reality in the next few months will be interesting to watch. (Photo courtesy of jakayakikwete.com)

UPDATE: The same poll indicates that folks from the isles are heading for yet another nail biter. Here is the intriguing little nugget:

Tanzanians are likely to vote for either Maalim Seif Shariff Hamad (23 per cent) or Dr Mohammed Gharib Bilal (21 per cent) respectively as the next Zanzibar president.