KATIBA REVIEW SPECIAL: How will referendum campaigns go?

Ukawa leaders discuss constitution writing process issues and an action plan in Dar es Salaam recently. PHOTO |  FILE 

By  Mwassa Jingi

In Summary

• The coalition for defenders of the people’s Constitution (Ukawa) has threatened not to participate in campaigning against the proposed Constitution on grounds that it doesn’t want to take part in a flawed process. Who will do it then?

Mbeya. The constitution making process has so far passed through three main stages. The first one was the formation of the Constitutional Review Commission (CRC), whose one of its basic functions was to collect, analyse public views and then issue the first draft Constitution. The second stage was that of preparing the second draft Constitution by the CRC after receiving views from the ...
.constitutional fora and members of the public at large.  The third stage was that of Constituent Assembly (CA), which was supposed to use the final draft Constitution to enact the proposed Constitution. The fourth stage, which is still underway, is for all eligible voters to vote for or against the proposed Constitution through a referendum.

While the first three main stages were carried out vide the Constitutional Review Act, 2011 (Cap 83), the referendum process is done vide the Referendum Act, 2013, which among other things, is preceded by civic and voter education to be facilitated by the National Electoral Commission (NEC) for two months followed by campaigns for one month before the referendum day. By voting for or against the proposed Constitution, voters will be answering the question already designed by NEC: Do you approve the proposed Constitution? Voters are legally free to answer Yes or No.

The Yes and No voting reminds Tanzanians the system we used to have for many years in electing the President of the United Republic of Tanzania during the monolithic political party system, which lasted for more than 30 years before re-introduction of a multiparty system in 1992. However, there is a difference between referendum voting and voting for a presidential candidate we used to have during the one party system. During those times, the government used to conduct a campaign for Yes only and a No campaign was not allowed. This is quite different from the referendum in which we are going to have both, Yes and No campaigns. Section 12(1) of the Referendum Act, establishes committees for Yes and No campaigns at national and constituency level.

Both campaign committees will campaign using their own resources. Although the law allows groups of people to apply and be registered by NEC, more likely campaign committees will be formed by political parties than by any other groups because they have direct interests and resources.

As we all know, the process of enacting the proposed Constitution divided political parties, whereby opposition parties - Chama cha Demokrasia na Maendeleo (Chadema),  Civic United Front (CUF) NCCR–Mageuzi and National League for Democracy) NLD) - boycotted the CA and eventually formed their own coalition - defence for people’s Constitution – (Ukawa) in Kiswahili. After leaving the CA in Dodoma, Ukawa went across the country to motivate people to register as voters and then vote against the proposed Constitution during the referendum. It was, therefore, rationally thought that Ukawa would form NO campaign committees to fight against the Yes campaign, which automatically will be formed by Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM).

Regretfully, Ukawa have changed their mind. Now they say they will not participate in the whole referendum process, claiming that the entire process of constitution making became illegitimate during CA deliberations in Dodoma, when the majority CA members from CCM changed the main structure of the draft Constitution of a three-government system proposed by the CRC back to a two-system as it is in the current Constitution, 1977. Now, apart from Ukawa, which will stiffly challenge CCM and thus balance the referendum campaign, which other group is capable of going for NO campaigns? Though many Tanzanians do not like the proposed Constitution for a simple reason that it has ignored their views they gave through the CRC and are ready to vote against it, who then will take care of their NO votes on the referendum day?

It should be remembered that each referendum committee will fund its campaign and have their own agents, who will be responsible for counting and tallying the votes before the winning side be pronounced by NEC.  Recently, three main Christian umbrella organisations of Tanzania Episcopal Conference (TEC), the Christian Community of Tanzania (CCT) and the Council of Pentecostal Churches (CPCT) urged their followers to turn out in huge numbers to register and then vote against the proposed Constitution.  By and large, religious organisations have cannot register as NO campaign committees and then go across the country to campaign against the proposed Constitution. 

Since Ukawa has ignored the referendum process and religious organisations are not able to campaign or have the resources to fund the process, CCM and its government are left alone to campaign for the proposed Constitution as it was during one political party in electing the president of the country. This makes CCM shriek with laughter. Unfortunately, we continue wasting our resources for something, which does not worth anything. We wasted billions of shillings during the CA, which instead of mainly improving the draft Constitution if there was any necessity, they overhauled its basic structure and used their time to amend the current Constitution in the expense of writing a new Constitution using the draft Constitution. The referendum process like any election is going to cost us billions of shillings, something which does not worth the value of money spent. The contents of the proposed Constitution will be done through amending the current Constitution using Article 98(1&2).

I had a privilege to be among the teams from the Legal and Human Rights Centre (LHRC), which went over all the country to facilitate civic and voter education for the referendum. Many people, who attended our rallies in all districts of Mbeya Region were worried that their right to vote on the referendum day would be sabotaged for lack of proper supervision on No votes. Ironically, neither the government nor the ruling party is concerned about this mismanagement of resources for the constitution making process, which the results are already known. The government and the National Assembly in enacting such a controversial law aimed at confusing people and then pass the type of Constitution they wanted. Since the Constitution is the country’s document, the government was supposed to allocate the budget for referendum campaigns of both sides - Yes and No. The government will use public resources to conduct a Yes campaign, while we won’t have a No campaign. It’s just ridiculous!

The author is a lawyer/journalist. He can be reached at mwassajingi@yahoo.com, 0756 440 175.