An initiative of the National Academy of Public Administration, and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the Bobst Center for Peace and Justice, Princeton University Oral History Program Series: Elections Interview no.: G6 Interviewee: Clarence Kipobota Interviewer: Varanya Chaubey Date of Interview: 24 November 2008 Location: LHRC Dar es Salaam Tanzania Innovations for Successful Societies, Bobst Center for Peace and Justice Princeton University, 83 Prospect Avenue, Princeton, New Jersey, 08544, USA www.princeton.edu/successfulsocieties CHAUBEY: My name is Varanya Chaubey. Today is November 24, 2008. I'm here with Mr. Clarence Kipobota, who is Outreach Services Coordinator at the Legal and Human Rights Center (LHRC) in Dar es Salaam. I'd like to thank you for participating in our interview. KIPOBOTA: Okay, welcome. CHAUBEY: I'd like to begin by asking you a little bit about your personal background. Would you describe the position you hold now? KIPOBOTA: I'm the Outreach Services Coordinator. I've been working with the Legal and Human Rights Center for past five years, since I graduated law degree from the University of Dar es Salaam. My duties are to coordinate programs which are within the outreach services of Legal and Human Rights Center. We have a mass-education program. We have human rights monitoring program. We have legal aide program. We have a public engagement program, which in it, it has three sub-programs. We have election watch program. We have the parliament watch program. We have the justice watch program, and the government watch program. Also we do have a gender program, which is also within the Department of Outreach Services, which I coordinate. So, I coordinate all those kind of things. There are programs officers who are actually supervising those programs and I'm the overall coordinator of all those programs. CHAUBEY: Okay, and would you describe a little bit the elections program that you have here? KIPOBOTA: First of all my organization, Legal and Human Rights Center, is one of the monitors which form part of the Electoral Monitoring Committee here in Tanzania. So we normally participate in the election process prior, during, and after the election. That is our monitoring scope. We've been doing that since the year 2002 up to the moment. Personally I have not been directly involved in the monitoring process in the field. But as the organizers have been organizing the team which is going to monitor elections, but I've been involved in the post-elections issues such as cases and things like that-the dialogues, pre and the post-elections issues I've been involved in a lot. But as for my organization, has been monitoring elections for quite some times, both the general elections and the bi-elections. Yes, and both local government elections, because we have two categories of elections. We have the local government elections and then we have the general elections, which cover the central part of the government. My organization is part of the monitoring team for both levels of the elections and we've been doing that for quite some time, as I've said. CHAUBEY: Are there any partnerships that this organization has in its election work? KIPOBOTA: Yes, we-the committee that I've mentioned, the Electoral Monitoring Committee, actually is like an umbrella organization which is comprised of a number of human rights and non-human rights groups within it. It is comprised of civil society generally. There are academics. It's very representative. There are academics. There are members of the civil society organizations. There are individuals. There are common people. There are politicians. It is very representative. Therefore, we are a member to that network organization. But again, we are also-we have been working together with the REDET (Research for Education and Democracy in Tanzania), which is the entity working on governance issues. It is coordinated by the University of Dar es Salaam. So, on part of civic education, which we normally coordinate before the elections, we've been working closely with the REDET and our colleagues from Zanzibar, because Tanzania-the United Republic of Tanzania is divided in two parts: mainland Tanzania and then Zanzibar. So, in Zanzibar we have our colleagues, Zanzibar Legal Services Center, whom we have been working together for quite some time, especially on part of the civic education, to raise awareness on civic education at the public. So, we've been working on that. But also, we have what we call CCNC (the Constitutional Coalition on a New Constitution), it's a coalition on constitutional reform. Much of what we are doing is also to advocate for reform of the electoral laws in Tanzania through that coalition. It still exists at the moment, but it has not been learning very well because of the financial constraint. But at least it exists, and we normally meet and deliberate on the way forth. So, we are also part on that CCNC network, yes. CHAUBEY: Would you describe some of the issues that the CCNC network is occupying itself with and what are some of the recommendations it has made? KIPOBOTA: We have made a lot of recommendations through CCNC as far as electoral processes are concerned. One of the recommendations is the issue of composition of the National Electoral Committee (NEC), which is charged with the duty of monitoring, organizing, and coordinating. It has the duty of overall coordination of the electoral process in Tanzania. We've been saying that the composition of NEC makes it-the way it has been composed makes it not independent. Because as you might know, members of the Committee are elected by the President, therefore, we are questioning the independence of the Committee. Another issue that we've been advocating for reform is the issue of the-what we call loss of franchise. I mean, the Elections Act of Tanzania of 1985 does not allow prospective voters who are outside the country to vote on the election day, because as the law says, you have to be at the polling station on the material day-on the day of elections-on the polling day. Also, the Elections Act does not allow other groups, like prisoners, to vote. So, we've been saying that this actually inhibits the right of the citizens to vote, to participate in the governance of the country through voting. In the year 2006, in March, President Kikwete-Jakaya Kikwete, the President of the United Republic of Tanzania, was quoted by media saying that he'll make sure that by 2010 the electoral laws will be amended to allow those who are living abroad to have an opportunity of casting their votes to elect whoever they like. But, we have not seen any sign of that amendment of the electoral law. So, that is the second thing that we are advocating for. Why are we advocating for this particular issue? It's because like the last general election of 2005, 16.4 % of Tanzanians were actually registered themselves as voters for the elections. But what happened, only 11.8 % of them turned out for voting. So, you'll note that that difference between 16 and 11 is huge and most of them were abroad, some of them were in prisons. So, our argument is that we lose a lot of votes because of the restriction of the law, it does not allow those categories of peoples. We have also been saying that there is imbalance in party subsidies. At the moment, the law says that for a political party to benefit from the subsidies from the government, it has to have at least 5% of the total votes cast or one seat in the Parliament. So, we are wondering for the young political parties-for sure, they could not in any way reach the percentage of 5% of the total votes. So, we are saying that this is the poison to the survival of the political parties, especially those which has been recently registered. Actually, we saw this even during the 2005 elections. Those young political parties were unable to go all over the country to campaign for them to be elected. So, without a subsidy, without the support from the government, these young political parties are always denied the fair treatment when it comes to campaigning in the elections. We've been saying that there is a need of doing away with this requirement of 5%. We are saying that provided that the party is duly registered according to the law, it should receive at least some few amount of money to assist it, to facilitate it, to learn the campaigns, and to have it voted for. Another issue that we have been campaigning for is the-what is called in Swahili, Takrima, which is sort of political corruptions. It's a sort of-it is called in law, tradition hospitality. So lucky enough, my organization, the Legal and Human Rights Center, together with others: Lawyers Environmental Action Team and National Legal Aide Assistance, in the year 2006 we managed to pursue a strategic litigation in the high court of Tanzania, and ultimately the court declared that the provision within the Elections Act which allows that tradition hospitality during electoral campaigns is actually unconstitutional because it creates unfair treatment. Those who has money can actually be elected as leaders because tradition hospitality according to that law was meant to mean that if a politician is participating in the campaign, he or she can give t-shirts or Khanga, traditional dress here in Tanzania, Khanga, or food to the supporters. We argued successfully to the court that this creates an unequal platform between the political parties or candidates participating in the campaigns. The high court actually decided in our favor and that provision within the Elections Act was declared unconstitutional. So, at least we see that what we've been saying has been taken into account, at least through the court. But see, another issue that we've been saying is that there have been disparities in media access and the coverage during the elections. We have both government-owned media like radio, TV, and the newspapers. We have also private-owned media, both TV, radio, and the newspapers. What we witnessed, I'm using the 2005 examples because it's the recent general election that we had in Tanzania. In 2005 general elections, the information that we gathered from the survey from one organization called the Center for Governance and Development, it noted that in both elections of 1995 and the elections that followed in 2005, despite the presence of the electoral laws and the policies that provide strict guidelines for the media to provide non-partisan coverage among the others, this organization, the Center for Governance and Development saw media involvement in which political parties continued to face unequal access to the media. For instance, the government-owned media was blamed of discriminating against the other opposition political parties. Therefore, the coverage in terms of the air-time given to the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM), the ruling party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi, was not the same as what was given to other political parties for the government-owned media. So, we are saying that the government-owned media is actually financed by the people themselves-the taxpayers. Why should it be bias in terms of the coverage? That is one of the issues that we've been advocating for. So, those are kind-some of the issues that we've been advocating for. But also, we-from last year we've been also monitoring the issue of permanent voters' register. I'm sure you've heard about it. We've been saying that the process of updating it is very uncertain, it's very uncertain at the moment. I'll give you an example, a recent example. This year there was a bi-election of Tunduru. We said that more than 15,000 prospective voters have not been registered. According to the law, you can't vote unless you are-your name is in the permanent voter registers. But the law does not force, does not obligate the National Electoral Commission to update the voters' register periodically. It's under discretion of the National Electoral Commission to update the voters' register. When it comes to the bi-elections which occur now and then, like next month we shall have the bi-election following the death of one of the members of the Parliament in Mbeya, southern part of the country. So, those who has attained the age of majority, that is 18 years, and their names are not appearing in the voters' register, they can't vote. The process of updating it has been very, very slow because the law does not obligate the National Electoral Commission to update it within a given period of time. So, we see it as a challenge. We see it as a challenge. One of the political parties-opposition political parties here which is chaired by Reverend Christopher Mtikila tried to actually to contest it in court, but he was not successful because of the technicalities of the court. The high court says that he does not have a local sustained, because he didn't even indicate the number of the people who were prospective voters to be registered by National Electoral Committee. So, that is yet another impediment when it comes to the issue of free and fair elections, and the right to take part in to electoral process in the country. So yes, that is it. CHAUBEY: On the subject of the permanent voters' register, I understand this has been a recent move towards doing this. And yet, to clarify, they are not moving fast enough to update it? KIPOBOTA: Yes, yes. CHAUBEY: Is there-are there any steps that you think that could be taken to pick up this bulk of voters that is going unregistered every year? Do you think moving to a better technology will help them or are there other issues at stake? KIPOBOTA: Yes, we-the better technology is one of the solutions which can actually work out. But again, we advised the National Electoral Committee to decentralize its powers because it is centralized-its powers. I think one of the solutions could also be to delegate its powers to the authorities at the local government level, from the level of the district-of the level-even down-up to the level of the villages. They can use-you know, luckily enough in Tanzania we have a very good decentralized system-the local government system. The structure of the local government starts from the street level, to the village level, to the ward level, to the district subdivision, to the district, to the region. We said that to begin with, you can delegate your powers of administering registration of the voters up to the level of the region or up to the level of districts. Because the district executive officers are also known as returning officers according to the law, therefore, they can-apart from the other administrative duties that they are doing, they can actually manage the voters' register-the permanent voters' register. But, that has not been the case and until when the National Electoral Commission agrees to delegate their power, it's when the process will be hastened. Of course, plus technology, because at the moment they are doing a very manual work of using a pen and paper to register the people. To update it is very, very difficult because of the urbanization. There is a huge influx of the people moving from the up-country to the major cities like Dar es Salaam, Arusha, and Kilimanjaro. Therefore, keeping track of the movement of the people, registering the new voters-it has been a very difficult work for the NEC. They are saying that they are understaffed because of the budget allocation by government. But to me, I think if they would have delegated some of their powers it would have been easy, it would have been cost effective to manage the voters' register. So, that is a challenge. That is the challenge. CHAUBEY: In your view, are there any concerns about delegating powers to the district level? How would they ensure the independence and neutrality of the district officer, for instance? Are there any concerns you have on that subject? KIPOBOTA: Yes, at first instance the local government actually managed the registers of the voters of the local government elections, and to my experience, I've not yet come across any serious problem in respect of the management of the voters' register at the local government level. Therefore, I'm of the view that if local government officials will be given this duty and they, of course, after being capacitated on the ABC's on how to handle the voters' register, they can do. Because everything is possible provided that there is guideline on how to do it and those people who are supposed to administer or to manage the voters' register are actually capacitated to understand the procedures. It's possible if those two issues are taken into account, yes. CHAUBEY: One of the things you mentioned that has been quite a success is your campaign to change the laws about tradition hospitality. I imagine there were several political obstacles to getting this changed. Could you describe what some of those obstacles were and how you went around them? KIPOBOTA: Yes, the campaign against traditional hospitality or political corruption, as we normally call it-sometimes-was brought by a lot of things. One of the challenges was the political will to accept the change. For the first time, both members of the Parliament from the ruling party and from the opposition joined together to oppose our motion towards the change of the law, to remove the tradition hospitality within the laws. Why did they oppose? Because tradition hospitality actually benefited all of them. It was easy for-especially for those unscrupulous political leaders, political politicians, to use it as a process of getting votes from the voters. Therefore, we had a very difficult challenge. There was not any political will and there was an underground move to do some changes in the elections law. I don't know which changes they were contemplating about, but there was that underground movement. It took a lot of days for the court to start hearing that case. You know, sometimes we-the judicial of Tanzania is blamed of lack of independence. There is undue interference from the government officials. So, it took about six months for our case to be allocated to the judge. And for constitutional cases like that one, you need a column of three judges for it to be heard, to be pursued in court. Therefore, it was very, very difficult to get a column of three judges. We-according to the rumors that we heard, there was an underground movement from the government to make sure that there is a delaying tactic up to the next election. But fortunately, we had a very strong and focused strategy using media, using publications, the annual Human Rights Report, using shadow alternative reports submitted through the Commission of Human Rights of Africa. So, we managed. Out of the uproar-public uproar, we managed to succeed in the case, and lucky enough, the government didn't even appeal against the decision. But another point to that I forgot to mention about was the point of private candidate. This has also been atop of our agenda as far as the election issues are concerned-election and the right to take part in government affairs are concerns. We've been advocating for removal of the political affiliation requirement for quite some time. Until the year 2005, when the Chairman of the Democratic Party, one of the opposition party, Reverend Mtikila, decided to take a case in court. During that time we were pursuing the Takrima-the tradition hospitality case, therefore, it was not easy for us to take two cases at the same time. The case on a private candidate went through the high court and then actually the petitioner won at the level of the high court. The government is appealing to the Court of Appeals, which is the Supreme Court in Tanzania. Now we wait for the decision of the Supreme Court. So, why have we been campaigning against the affiliation to the political party? Because the Constitution of the United Republic of Tanzania says that for anybody who wants to contest for any political post has to be affiliated to a political party. We are saying that this actually contradicts the right to freedom of association. It forces someone to belong to a certain association for him or her to take part in the governance of the country. We are of the view that that provision is actually void and unconstitutional in the sense that it inhibits the freedom of the citizen to participate in elections, whether through political parties or individually as independent candidates. There is another thing that I forgot to say that we've been pursuing in relation to election issues. It's the issue of floor-crossing, I don't know if you know it-crossing-floor. According to the electoral laws of Tanzania, if you belong to a certain political party-say you belong to Civil United Front, if you wish to join another political party, you lose your parliamentary seat. So, our laws does not allow floor crossing-that you can cross from one political party to another political party but retain your political post, like if you are the members of the Parliament. At the moment, if one wants to cross from one political party to another and that person is an MP, is the member of the Parliament, the moment he crosses over, he loses his political post. Why? Because the constitution says that for the members of the Parliament-to be a member of the Parliament has to be affiliated to-it has to be sponsored by a political party. The reason why-when you cross over from the political party which sponsored you to the power, you have to lose your seat. We see it is unfair. Other countries, our neighboring countries like Malawi and Zambia, crossing the floor is allowed according to the law. So, the member of the Parliament from political party A can actually cross over to the political party B and retain his status as a member of the Parliament. But our law restricted that. So, that is another thing that we are campaigning for and it has come very strongly last year in our Tanzania Human Rights report, which is the situational report covering the human rights situation in Tanzania. It comes very strongly and we are happy that for the first time it was discussed during the June to August parliamentary session. Some of the members, especially from the opposition political parties, actually pursued it during the parliamentary session. We are happy that at least the Parliament has already picked it and it is on record of the Parliament. Maybe in the future all this will be rectified. So, it was we see that all these are hindrances to the free and fair elections, and we are of the view that if all this will be removed, we shall have a free and fair elections in the future. That's what we believe. CHAUBEY: Are there any issues on which the NEC consults with your organization or other legal organizations? KIPOBOTA: Yes, yes. NEC has been consultants on the issue of civic education. You know, they don't have sufficient funds. They normally receive some funding from the UNDP (United Nations Development Program). Normally, every year they get funds from UNDP, but again, they don't have the capacity. They have a very small secretariat of not more, as far as I know, of not more than 20 people. Not more than 20 people, I think, I'm not sure. But I think not more than 20 people. So, they have a very small secretariat. In terms of the institutional capacity, they don't have that capacity to conduct civic education to the people. They've been actually contacting us to do the civic education. I remember 2004-2005 we did together with REDET civic education. UNDP funded an umbrella of civic education-there was a loose umbrella of civic education because it was the time when we were approaching the general elections. Therefore, there was a loose network which comprised of REDET, my organization, and other like-minded organizations. Together with other members of that loose network, we managed to conduct civic education. So, even NEC itself actually recommended for what we did and I remember in one of the meetings that I attended, I can't remember the month, but it was early 2005, the NEC said that civil society has the duty to conduct civic education because the government can't do it at the moment though the Elections Act poses the duty to the government to conduct civic education according to the 2002 amendment to the Elections Act. Therefore, NEC has been pushing that duty to the civil society and we have been doing that. In the year 2005, between April to July, we conducted training in two different regions. We divided this country into eight groups-zones, whereby we personally attended the training, and so, I conducted the training in southern part of the country. Yes, that one. But secondly, there was-apart from NEC, there was a Bunge association. Bunge, it's a Swahili word which means Parliament. There was a Parliament association, but it is now not working any longer. That Parliament association, the Bunge association commissioned as a work to move almost all over the country in the year 2003, I remember, to conduct sort of public hearing to the general public to inform them about the-to sensitize them on the right to vote, to sensitize them on the amendment of the electoral laws. We did that, and that Parliament association, or Bunge association, it's a-I can say it's a government association because Parliament is not a private institution. So, we've been involved by the government in that aspect, yes. Even in the periodical report by the Government of Tanzania, which has been submitted to the Human Rights Committee at Geneva, because we are part to the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights, and we are-my country is due for review July next year-2009. So, the government submitted this year its overdue report to the commission that reports on the compliance of-compliance on the civil and the political rights conversion. Even in that document, the government itself actually recommended for the good work we are doing to utilize civic education to the general public. So we-the government actually appreciates our effort and I can say that it gives us a good environment through which we operate. The only challenge is that it's very difficult for it to adhere to our recommendations. Always saying that "You know, we don't have money, it's not the right time, etc." But the general lack of political will-that's what actually delayed the process, yes. CHAUBEY: How did you go about conducting training? You mentioned you conducted it as well in the southern region. How do you-do you create the messages yourself and then-at here? Or is that something the NEC does? And then how do you go about disseminating the knowledge? KIPOBOTA: Yes, we disseminate through a number of ways. First one, we normally publish-like next year we shall publish the small booklets which narrates the rights and the duties of the citizen and the Electoral Committee or the government in respect of the-in relation to the election issues. So, we normally publish booklets in the Swahili language, which is our national language, as advocate's tools to sensitize people to vote, to educate the people what the law says about registration, about voting, about campaigning. And if you are not satisfied with the results, what are the procedures-those kind of things. So first we normally publish those kind of booklets or leaflets. They are very simple, in a very simplified language. We put pictures so that it can easily be understood by the people. But secondly, we normally conduct public hearing, like what you will be doing from next year-public hearing, but not country-wide on the selected areas, especially on the marginalized areas like Lindi/Mtwara, where we think that the information flow is not good like in major cities like Dar es Salaam, Kilimanjaro, Arusha, and Mwanza. So we normally go there, organize public hearing through the local government leaders so we have like an open meeting with loudspeakers. We deliver our message there, and question and answers. Sometimes we do conduct workshops on selected stakeholders, like the government officials, if we want to pursue a certain issue. Or returning officers, we tried in 2005 to conduct a training of the returning officers, but we didn't manage because of time. So, we use also workshops. We use media programs. Because my organization, Legal and Human Rights Center, actually owns media program. We have a television program, this is a weekly program which is owned and paid for by organization. We also have a radio program with the government radio. We use those avenues to pursue our message. But also, as a strategy, we trained the journalists in the year 2005 so that they can-the aim of that training was to capacitate them on how they can monitor the elections, on how they can unsurface the elections issues or violations. We equip them with human right knowledge, a little bit about the electoral laws-what they say, and how they can actually conduct investigatory journalism so that they can report relevant information to the public. That has been very useful, but the problem has been that we have not been able to-actually, we went far up to a level of registering the Human Rights Journalistic Club-something like that. It has been registered; it is independent entity not affiliated it was in any way. But they are at the moment lacking funds to learn it. But at least we have a pool of journalists who can-if we instructed them to monitor elections or what, they can always do that. So, we also use media to pursue our messages through the-to the public. Those are the kind of things that we've been doing. From last year we've been thinking of-actually, we've already done a need assessment to initiate human rights clubs at the secondary school and at the university level. We've already started. We've done the need assessment and from next year-June, we shall start the human rights clubs in secondary schools and the university levels. The intention is to pursue the civic education. We think that if we train those students or pupils, they will have a sustainable knowledge on civic education so they can be good ambassadors once they finish school. So, those are strategies that we've been using. CHAUBEY: You mentioned marginalized populations. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about where your greatest concern lies in terms of marginalized populations, and what steps are being taken to enfranchise them? KIPOBOTA: To enfranchise them-okay, why do we call them-first, why do we call them marginalized? It's because even the level of development is very-it's very small. The infrastructure-like highways or roads to those places, is very poor. Therefore, the information is not reaching them in time. You can imagine they can't even buy a radio or a television set for them to get the information through media. Therefore, what we do is to go there physically. For sure we can't pursue the government to construct the roads or to install the television booster in those regions. But what we do is to take the message to them directly, knowing that they don't have an access to the newspapers, they don't have an access to the television, they don't have an access to the radio. They are totally in a different world. Therefore, when we go there you see that they are very, very-yes, they are far, far back from the real world. Therefore, we normally go there physically and conduct the training. We've been also having what we call "mobile liberty clinic", but this is not direct relating to the electoral issues. But for electoral issues, like myself, I went to Lindi and Mtwara. These two are the most marginalized regions in the year 2004. It was a very good experience to me because I met the people who actually don't know even the face of the newspaper. Therefore-yes, I think we need to go there physically. We can't reach them through radio or television. So, we targeted those groups because they are vulnerable. I can say they are marginalized in terms of the information, in terms of the infrastructure, in terms of the facilities to get the information. So, the reason why we think that we have to focus to them. We can't focus in areas like here in Dar es Salaam because the information is all over. Everyone has an access to the radio. Even if you use a public transport, you have the radio, you can get the information. Newspapers are scattered all over, so we can't concentrate on major cities like Dar es Salaam for that reason. CHAUBEY: Is the NEC also working on these marginalized populations to reach out to them? KIPOBOTA: Yes-no, I'm not sure. Apart from the fact that they have to go there for updating or registration of voters, I'm not sure if they have any other programs in those marginalized areas, I'm not sure, because NEC does not have a component of civic education in it. It has according to the law, but it has not been able to work on it because of the institutional capacity. So, logically I think it's not easy for them to reach those up-country or marginalized areas for the civic education. CHAUBEY: What are some of the-in your view, the most important or most significant problems surrounding the election process in Tanzania today that ought to be addressed first of all? KIPOBOTA: First of all is the issue of law, because the law has to be there to govern the whole process pre, during, and after the elections. Therefore, for the country to have free and fair elections, the law has to comply with the international-set standards. So, the first thing is that there must be good laws for the free and the fair elections to take place. But secondly, I think we need to address other issues like-to have an affirmative measures, you know, the build to the confidence of women to participate in the electoral issues in elections, and to take part in the governance of the country through elections. At the moment, we have very few women in politics. And as you know, politics has to do with governance of the country. Why few women engage themselves in politics is historical. It has something to do with the historical background. It's because of the culture and the tradition of my country, Tanzania. Like any other, in most of the tribes, I can say 75%, a woman is not supposed to speak in front of the public. That has been a taboo for quite some time. Therefore, women do not have confidence to stand forward and to campaign for to be the leaders. They've been ending up to get special seats-the Parliament. So far, the space for them has been increased up to minimum of 30%, as special seats in our Parliament. So, I think another important thing is to address the issue of representation of women in the electoral process. This goes up to the issue of voting. Most of those who vote-I don't have statistics, but through observation, most of those who actually vote are men and not women. Why? Because they are supposed to take care of the-everything at the domestic level. They have to go to the forest for the firewood. They have to fetch water for the children and the husband. So, you find that during election day they are supposed to take care of their family, therefore, they don't go out for voting. I think another issue is the issue of public awareness, the issue of civic education. This is the most important one. The most important one because I'm of the view that if the citizen will be capacitated on issues of civic education, they will be able to fully participate in the elections. They will be able to analyze what are the policies which this candidate is bringing forward to us, what are the prospect of this political party. At the moment we lack that analysis. We normally select the leaders in accordance to the campaign. The election of the leader depends on the power of the campaign. So, I think that has to do with the civic education, to capacitate the people how to analyze the issues, how they can actually decide who is the relevant person to them, who can govern them. Also, to participate in the process. To vote, but participate in the voting process or to contest-even to contest for the electoral process, because I've been seeing the same faces as members of the Parliament since when I was still a young boy up to the age of 32 years. That means the politics of Tanzania has been dominated by a few people; the few educated or experienced people-the reason why we see a lot of poor governance issues coming forward. Again, the people can't remove this out of the-because of the lack of the civic education. They don't know how to analyze. They don't know how to pursue. They don't know how to decide for what. So, I think civic education is one of the major issues. Another is-apart from legal, women issues, or civic education, I think we need to have good preparation, preparation of our elections, because there are a lot of administrative challenges, not legal challenges, a lot of administrative challenges in coordination of elections. Like timely availability of ballot to the polling stations. Like paying of the returning officers. I can't remember-was it in the year 2000 and 2005? In some places they even boycotted to supervise the elections. The issue of administration has also to do with modernization of our election process. In America, it takes only four or five hours to announce the elections results. But in Tanzania, it takes almost a week to announce the elections results. That gives room for maneuvering and forgeries of the results. So, it has to do-the issue of administration has to do with the technology as well, apart from the economical reasons. Also, the issue of administration has to do with the issue of peace and the security during the elections, because the police force of Tanzania has never been free of blames. They've been violating electoral adjurations by denying the political rallies, by denying us places for assemblies, by denying peaceful processions. That has been a major challenge as well. I think it's one of the pertinent issues to be addressed on part of the administrative issues. So, that is it, but in other places I can say that this election process has not been reaching the people. Like in the place where we have two groups of indigenous people in Tanzania, the Hadzabe and the Ndorobo. Those have not been voting for quite some times because it is said that they ignorant even if you go there, they can't vote. But, I think something has to do. Maybe administrative measures to make sure that they vote as well, just like other citizens. So yes, I think for this moment those are major pertinent issues to be addressed as far as elections are concerned. On part of the monitoring of the elections, so far the platform for monitoring has been okay. There have not been any restrictions like what is happening in Zimbabwe, or what happened in Kenya. In Tanzania there is no such kind of restrictions for the local and the external observers to the elections. Like my organization actually participated in the monitoring of the recent bi-elections which were conducted where- Tarime district. Therefore, on part of the observation, I can't see any problem in that respect. CHAUBEY: I have one question about results posting. I believe now the electoral law says that they should post results at polling stations after they've been counted, when the station closes. In your view, does this actually-in reality, does this make the election freer and fairer? KIPOBOTA: No, the answer is yes and no. It's yes because the counting of the vote-the process of counting the votes, it's very participatory in the sense that the representatives coming from different political parties participated in the elections are actually invited to witness the counting process. That has been going very well. On the other side it's no, because there has been a complaint that some of the voters who are going to the polling stations are not eligible voters. They are called in Swahili Mamluk, I don't know in English how they call-like mercanaries, those who have been just planted to increase the number of votes for a particular party. But sometimes for those areas where there is a stronghold of opposition, there has been a lot of deliberate moves to delay the elections or to cause any kind of disruption like delaying to send the ballot boxes or--. So, on the other side there has been those kind of issues coming out of the elections. There has not been strong and well organized elections. The counting process-yes, as you see, it's okay, but there are a lot of other things behind the scenes going on; like increasing the vote, like reducing the vote of other people, corruptions, because some of the political parties do send representatives who are economically very poor. Therefore, they are very easy to be induced and convert the votes. That has been happening. Corruption is one of the issues that is regarded as a violation of the election process. Therefore, the counting process, despite the fact it takes a lot of time, a lot of days, it's good, I can say because of the representation. But what is happening behind the scenes is what I can say that is a problem. You can't say openly that this has been a problem, because the counting process was not good. No, no, you can't say that. But normally what I see is the complaint that there was a forgery of increasing the votes or reducing the votes of the other side. That has been on all of the days after the elections. Therefore, the counting process is okay. But, as I've said, we need to hasten the process. The more you delay it, the more you create the room for distortion. So, I think if we modernize, we computerized our counting system like what is in America, I think that will reduce the room of distortion of the votes. That's what I think. CHAUBEY: In conclusion, I'd like to ask if there is something that I haven't brought up that you think is important and you would like to mention yourself. I leave it to you to bring it up. KIPOBOTA: Oh no, I think I've said everything that I was supposed to say. But what I can say-I can say that in Tanzania, as far as elections issues are concerned, we are still learning because we have just resorted into multi-party democracy. In the past-before 1995, we used to have a mono-party system, whereby the issues of forgeries, the issues of distortion of the results, and what, what, what, were not as serious as they are now. So, I can say that being an infant in this process, my country Tanzania has to see what others are doing. Maybe to have a strategic tour like in America or in other African countries just to learn how others are doing, especially for those who have been pioneers of the multi-party elections for quite some time. But I believe if what I've said will be rectified, we shall have free and fair elections in the future in Tanzania. Yes, I wish one day to have sort of elections like in America. I followed the American electoral process from stage on up to last stage. I even didn't sleep during-on the day when Obama was announced as the President. I like the way they conducted the elections. The media coverage was very-was perfect. The arrangement of the elections before the polling day was very perfect. The counting process was also very perfect. In that kind of environment, you have election which is free of any kind of blame. So, that is it, I can say, yes. CHAUBEY: Well, thank you very much. You've shared a lot of information with us. Thank you for your time. KIPOBOTA: Okay, thank you, thank you. Innovations for Successful Societies Series: Elections Oral History Program Interview number: G-6 ______________________________________________________________________ 2 Use of this transcript is governed by ISS Terms of Use, available at www.princeton.edu/successfulsocieties Use of this transcript is governed by ISS Terms of Use, available at www.princeton.edu/successfulsocieties