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RR RUEHBZ RUEHDU RUEHJO RUEHMR RUEHRN
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ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 270301Z MAY 09
FM AMEMBASSY DAR ES SALAAM
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 8533
INFO RUCNSAD/SOUTHERN AF DEVELOPMENT COMMUNITY COLLECTIVE
RUEHJB/AMEMBASSY BUJUMBURA 2889
RUEHKM/AMEMBASSY KAMPALA 3419
RUEHLGB/AMEMBASSY KIGALI 1345
RUEHMS/AMEMBASSY MUSCAT 0052
RUEHNR/AMEMBASSY NAIROBI 1280
RUEHDS/USMISSION USAU ADDIS ABABA
RHMFIUU/CJTF HOA//J3//
RUEWMFC/HQ USAFRICOM STUTTGART GE
RUEAIIA/CIA WASHINGTON DC
RHEHNSC/NSC WASHDC

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 DAR ES SALAAM 000340 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPARTMENT FOR AF/E JLIDDLE; INR/RAA FOR FEHRENREICH 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: KDEM PGOV PHUM TZ
SUBJECT: ZANZIBAR BY-ELECTION ENDS PEACEFULLY WITH RULING PARTY CCM 
WIN 
 
REF A: DAR ES SALAAM 326, REF B: DAR ES SALAAM 238, REF C: DAR ES 
SALAAM 74 and prior 
 
¶1.  SUMMARY: The May 23 by-election in Magogoni, a contested suburb 
of Zanzibar capital Stonetown, ended with a ruling CCM party win 
over opposition CUF (2847 to 1974, or about 58% of the votes).  The 
by-election was a key test of each party's will and a dry-run for 
Zanzibar Electoral Commission machinery in the last electoral event 
before the winner-take-all General Elections expected in October 
¶2010.  Fortunately, violent campaign rhetoric (ref A) did not match 
reality on Election Day, which was peaceful.  There were some 
electoral anomalies, but observers - including losing CUF - said it 
was the best-run election ever held in Zanzibar (where political 
contests have usually been bloody).  Observers also note, however, 
that the sustained, high-level focus on a single voting district, as 
in Magogoni, will be very different from simultaneous voting in 50 
such districts in 2010.  END SUMMARY. 
 
RALLIES 
------- 
 
¶2. May 22 saw the biggest rallies of the campaign.  CCM national SYG 
Yusuf Makamba headlined the CCM event and worked house-to-house to 
unite factionalized senior CCM cadres.  As before, CUF drew about 
double the numbers of CCM for its rallies, but could not deliver the 
same numbers at the ballot box.  During CUF rallies, leaders told 
CUF voters to come to the polls early and to stay watchful for fraud 
attempts in the late morning and afternoon. 
 
THE VOTE 
-------- 
 
¶3. Voters for the most part were orderly and seemed to be informed 
about locations and procedures to vote.  Fully two-thirds (or more) 
of the voters were women.  CUF overwhelmingly carried the District 
of Kinuni (site of violence during registration; ref B), but CCM 
made strong showings in the other two areas, enough to take the 
election. 
 
¶4. Perhaps following CUF's entreaties, most voters appeared at the 
polls an hour before it opened, and most of the votes were cast by 
about 1030 a.m.  By the early afternoon, we saw senior CCM officials 
driving voters to the polling stations in their personal vehicles. 
At CCM branch offices, we saw Zanzibar government vehicles bringing 
voters, mostly youths, to staging areas.  At all polling places, 
Zanzibar ministers, national parliamentarians and senior officials 
from both parties were ubiquitous.  Zanzibar Election Commission 
(ZEC) senior leadership also patrolled the polls.  Nonetheless, 
young CCM-picked volunteers actually confirmed voter identification 
and handed out ballots, which the various party observers sometimes 
vocally criticized. 
 
¶5. Anomalies we witnessed directly included at least two people who 
were caught with voter cards not issued to them. At the small voting 
center at a geriatric hospital, several dozens of voters needed 
assistance.  In most cases that "help" was provided by the 
hospital's principal doctor, a SMZ-CCM employee (CCM took almost 90% 
of the vote in that polling place, but it also should be noted that 
the hospital itself is a CCM/Government of Zanzibar (SMZ) 
institution). 
 
¶6. On two occasions we saw under-age-looking people trying to 
register with someone else's IDs.  Other international observers saw 
a few more such cases.  In fact, we saw large numbers of young 
people, reputedly 18-19 years old according to their newly 
SMZ-issued ID and voter registration cards, many of whom appeared to 
be younger than 18.  One young girl admitted to Zanzibar Affairs 
Specialist (ZAS) that she was in "Third Form," which would make her 
about 16 or 17 if she was a typical student.  Some of the youth were 
seen to obtain their voting materials from the local CCM-appointed 
"Shehe," or headman.  When challenged, they said that because a 
young girl had her ID card confiscated by CUF "Blue Guards" during 
registration (ref B), they elected to arrive without ID and collect 
it at the polling place, lest they be ambushed en route to voting. 
 
 
POLICE: PRESENT BUT SUBDUED 
--------------------------- 
 
 
DAR ES SAL 00000340  002 OF 003 
 
 
¶7. Fortunately, bellicose campaign rhetoric (ref A) did not match 
reality on Election Day.  There had been rumors of extra troops 
coming to the island and the movement of heavy weapons beforehand, 
but ZAO and ZAS went by the various military camps and irregular 
forces camps and saw no evidence of this.  There was an increased 
police presence in the Magagoni area, and each polling station had 
several police assigned to it.  Ali Mussa Ali, head of Zanzibar 
Police operations and training, made it a point to consult with ZAO 
several times a day to ask for feedback on how his men were doing. 
 
 
¶8. Ali Mussa said he selected local Zanzibaris for the sensitive 
task of voter security (COMMENT: Policing is a Union competency, and 
much of the force is Christian mainlanders, as opposed to the 97% 
Muslim population of Zanzibar. END COMMENT).  Ali Mussa also said 
that prior to the vote he held special training seminars on voters' 
rights for the men picked to be involved, and police leaders also 
participated in seminars held with ZEC.  Ali Mussa himself has 
attended several UN-sponsored training courses in Human Rights. 
 
¶9. Police in and around the polling areas were unarmed, but nearby 
and visible were special riot squad members.  At one polling 
station, towards the end of the day, a group of armed "Special 
Police," perhaps bored, came into the voter area and milled around 
until ZAO suggested to the commander that their presence near the 
entrance might be construed as threatening by some.  The Police 
Commander promptly sent them away on patrol. 
 
¶10. Further from the polling areas ZAO and ZAS saw groups of idle 
young men hanging about, but it was hard to discern if these people 
were CCM-backed "Janjaweed" or CUF "Blue Guards," sent to intimidate 
or protect - or if they had anything at all to do with the vote 
(unemployment is high in Zanzibar, especially for young males 
between 16-30).  Those with whom we spoke said they lived in the 
area but were not voting, because they lived just outside the 
district, had not been resident in the district long enough to 
register, or were otherwise occupied. 
 
INTERNATIONAL OBSERVERS 
----------------------- 
 
¶11. The Embassies of Sweden, Netherlands, UK, Ireland, Norway and 
the EC sent observers, and members of the UN (including the Country 
Team Leader) were present and visible.  Many of the European 
election observers had witnessed other recent Tanzanian by-election 
held in the mainland over the last several months (septels), and all 
were impressed by the heightened state of politicization of 
Zanzibaris vis-`-vis mainlanders. Early during Election Day, one of 
the observers got into a spat with a young, over-zealous ZEC worker. 
 ZEC Director Salim Kassim took the side of his worker and 
complained that it was the observers who were obstructing the 
voters, not anyone else.  Later he said he had no rancor with the 
U.S. or the UN (the only observers during the registration process), 
but he griped to us that the Europeans had come with an 
anti-ZEC/anti-SMZ agenda. 
 
¶12. After the election, ZAO spoke with reporters from CCM-run 
variety radio station "Radio Uhuru," and did an on-camera interview 
with National network ITV/Radio 1.  He also spoke with daily 
newspapers "Zanzibar Leo" and the "Daily News."  Our message remains 
that we will continue to support the efforts of the UN and ZEC to 
improve machinery for a free and fair election, but, ultimately, 
reconciliation between the parties is the only path toward long term 
progress and development. 
 
PARTY VIEWS 
----------- 
 
¶13. CCM members looked more exhausted than pleased after the 
elections.  Usually CCM electoral victories are marked by 
party-sponsored street festivals and rallies, but there were none 
evident around Stonetown post-election. In a rare occurrence for 
Zanzibar, CUF candidate Hamad Ali Hamad conceded defeat, but asked 
his newly elected CCM rival Asha Mohammed to consider working with 
CUF on issues pertaining to Magogoni.  He praised ZEC, yet 
acknowledged anomalies, which he called "inevitable."  He hoped ZEC 
would "iron out any shortcomings" by 2010. 
 
COMMENT: 
 
DAR ES SAL 00000340  003 OF 003 
 
 
 
¶14. With high-profile observers from both parties, scores of 
hand-picked police, the best ZEC had to offer, and enough 
international observers to cover every polling station full time, 
and despite the "anomalies," the Magogoni by-election was probably 
the best-organized election ever held in Zanzibar, as a few senior 
CUF officials quietly confided to us. 
 
¶15. Looking at the hang-dog faces of CCM members and the barely 
concealed smirks from CUF immediately after the vote count, one 
might have been confused as to who was the victor and who the loser. 
 CCM clearly had a long road to travel just to retain its own seat 
for a single, 11-month term in a local legislature where CCM enjoys 
an absolute majority, in a CCM-run district the party gerrymandered 
to control.  Whereas a seemingly united CUF had its candidate picked 
and unanimously supported him well before campaign season, CCM had 
no less than 10 contenders for the slot.  CCM had to bridge 
factions, appease behind-the-scenes king-makers and navigate 
contentious party caucuses from the district level up to the 
National Central Executive Committee just to field a candidate.  In 
the end, CCM's National Executive had to pick the candidate, a 
virtual unknown who was third choice in local party polling.  Then 
CCM National SYG Makamba had to make several trips to Zanzibar to 
get the party to work together.  A CCM win might have been 
inevitable, but the fact that the party had to make a hard, muddy 
slog from precinct to precinct must have been exhaustive (and 
expensive).  For CCM it is as if it has climbed to the top of the 
mountain only to see more mountains ahead.  CCM will have 50 such 
Districts to win in Zanzibar in 2010, many of which it decidedly 
does not control. 
 
¶16. CUF, meanwhile, seems to be taking the long view.  If it can 
stay unified and keep discipline among the younger hotheads of the 
party (and it appears that it can for now), CUF seems able to bring 
the battle to CCM in every sub-precinct, including in areas thought 
to be impregnable.  CUF also has adopted a seemingly conciliatory 
attitude toward electoral mechanisms on the one hand and a more 
bellicose attitude toward CCM on the other. 
 
¶17. While ZEC "volunteers" might fudge voter identification in some 
cases, the checks and balances of the UN-trained and -supervised 
machinery, led by newcomer Karna Soro (who is doing a good job in 
our opinion), generally ran well.  Any fraud would not have changed 
the outcome of Magogoni in our view.  Meanwhile, the political 
reality of Zanzibar remains unchanged since the time of 
pre-independence: the archipelago is almost equally divided into two 
political camps.  These opposing camps are NOT/NOT aligned on a 
religious basis (nearly 100 percent Muslim).  Nor are they formed on 
an ethnic basis.  Rather, they are based on historical factors 
relating to the varied responses of sectors and regions of Zanzibar 
to the British/Sultanate period. 
 
¶18.  While ZEC has shown its ability to generally manage one 
by-election well, it will need continued support from the donors to 
carry off with equal success an exercise fifty times the size - and 
with substantially greater stakes - in 2010.  At the political 
level, as discussed recently during President Kikwete's meetings in 
Washington, we must continue to focus on finding confidence-building 
measures, to drain the bitterness from Zanzibar politics with a view 
to political reconciliation and accommodation, perhaps including an 
agreement on power sharing, before the winner-take-all vote of 
¶2010. 
 
ANDRE