{Tanzania’s opposition parties – which have grouped under the UKAWA coalition – on Thursday agreed to field a candidate for the country’s presidential election, slated for October.}
“We have agreed 100 percent to have one presidential candidate for the next election,” coalition secretary Wilbrod Slaa told Anadolu Agency.
He added that coalition parties have also reached an agreement on most candidates for the parliamentary election in October.
Slaa, a presidential candidate himself for Chadema Party in the 2010 election, said the coalition would declare the name of its presidential candidate on Aug. 14.
The UKAWA coalition was formed in Dodoma – Tanzania’s administrative capital – in 2014 with the goal of pushing for constitutional reform in the African state.
Chadema chief, Freeman Mbowe, said the opposition would stand united during the next presidential election.
“This coalition is totally and actually one of the longtime cries from common Tanzanians since the multiparty system was introduced in 1995,” Mbowe said.
“No way we can go against people’s will,” he told Anadolu Agency.
Coalition party chiefs say their unity aimed to remove the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi Party – which ruled the country for more than three decades now – from power.
“We are up to it,” James Mbatia, the head of the opposition NCCR–Mageuzi Party, said.
“We have agreed on the give and take principle to remove the ruling party from power,” he added.
Political analysts, meanwhile, say the opposition coalition will not be an easy nut for the ruling party to crack.
“In the last four general elections, the ruling party has been winning with a very small margin from other political parties,” Paul Rwechungura said.
“This time it [the ruling party] might go because it has been scoring less votes, compared to those won by opposition parties in total,” he added.
The ruling party says, however, that it will not lose the next election to the coalition.
“The coalition does not represent any threat to us,” party secretary Nnape Mnauye told Anadolu Agency. “We have more than 50 years of experience in politics.”
He said his party will win the next election as it did in the past.
“Let’s wait for October to come,” he said confidently
World Bulletin
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