Local dons voice mixed reaction on US election

ALVAR MWAKYUSA

THERE has been mixed reaction locally on the ongoing petition in the United States for the Electoral College electors to pick Hillary Clinton as instead of President-elect Donald Trump, with the National Electoral Commission (NEC) ruling out the use of the system in local elections.

The system is already causing uncertainty in the United States where some citizens are signing a petition to push Electoral College electors to declare former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as the winner instead of Mr Trump.

Lately, reports indicate that Ms Clinton is on course to winning 2.5 million more votes than president-elect Donald Trump on popular vote.

The 70-year businessman is set to become the 45th president after scoring 290 Electoral College votes, beating his competitor who scored 248 votes. Ms Clinton, however, polled about 63 million votes as opposed to 61 million by Mr Trump in the popular vote.

In separate interviews with the ‘Daily News’ yesterday, political scientists and NEC Director of Elections, Mr Ramadhani Kailima, gave varied reactions on the use of the system in Tanzania.

“Electoral College is a system used only in the United States; it was introduced to purposely protect the interests of each state in that country given that initially all states were separate until they united to form one country,” Mr Kailima told this newspaper in a telephone interview.

He added that it was due to the history of the US that they adopted the system. Electoral College was meant to create a proportional representation and protect economic and population interests of each state.”

The NEC top executive went on to cite the example of the United Kingdom where the prime minister is obtained from a political party or coalition of political parties with the largest number of representatives in the House of Commons.

Mr Kailima was of a view, however, that the Electoral College could be used in future for the East African Community (EAC), should the regional grouping decide to elect one president.

In a separate interview, Professor Kitila Mkumbo and Dr Benson Bana, both of the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM), had similar views on adoption of the system in Tanzania.

“However, this should not be something to be done overnight. We still need to prepare our people politically to be able to reach that stage,” Dr Bana stated in a telephone interview yesterday. He added that time must come for Tanzania to have an Electoral College system that is inclusive to create proportional representation.

“The system should, however, be accepted by all parties,” he said. The sentiments were echoed by Prof Mkumbo, suggesting that the system be considered in the future elections.