Court to settle sole candidacy saga

Boniface Meena, The Citizen Correpondent

Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. 

The long running legal battle to allow independent candidates to contest elective political posts will come to an end this month when the African Court of Peoples’ and Human Rights (AfCPHR) will decide on the matter.The firebrand Democratic Party chairman, Rev Christopher Mtikila, and the Tanganyika Law Society (TLS) are asking the court to declare provisions barring sole candidacy unlawful.

They went to the regional court after their successive attempts to have private candidates run for political office hit a wall in the local courts. 

The two are asking the court to declare that Tanzania’s decision to bar its people from contesting presidential, parliamentary and local council elections, unless they pass through a politial party, was against the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights which Tanzania signed in 1982 and ratified two years later.

TLS president Francis Stolla told reporters in Dar es Salaam yesterday that “the decision will come out within this month and will state whether or not we are going to have independent candidates.”

They argue that the eight constitutional amendments of 1992 and Article 34 of 11 amendments that prohibited independent candidates grossly breached basic and democratic rights of the people. 

They say that the changes also violated the Internatinal Convenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR).

The struggle for independent candidacy in Tanzania started back in 1993 when Mtikila filed a case in the High Court challenging provisions of the Constitution barring such candidates.

He argued that the requirement abridged the right to participate in national public affairs guaranteed by the Constitution.

Justice Kahwa Lugakingira sided with Mtikila in 1993 when he declared that it was lawful for independent candidates to contest elections along with rivals sponsored by political parties.

Source: The Citizen (18/09/2012): http://www.thecitizen.co.tz/news/4-national-news/25834-court-to-settle-sole-candidacy-saga