THE DAILY NEWS of Tuesday, 28th June, 2016, carried the following news item under the heading TLP SUPPORTS MAGUFULI ON POLITICAL RALLIES : "The Tanzania Labour Party (TLP) has thrown its weight behind President John Magufuli's directives for political parties to shun endless political rallies, forums and demonstrations, in order to allow the citizens to engage in productive activities".
Quoting from a statement issued by Augustine Mrema, the National Chairman of TLP, the 'Daily News' reported that Mrema had said the following: " It should be understood that such political activities are not the priorities of the people.
The people out there want improvements of social amenities such as education, health, water and infrastructure, among others. So if Opposition political leaders insist on never-ending politicking, it is obvious that the Government will not get enough time to fulfill the campaign pledges they made to voters regarding these matters".
It is this news item which prompted me to reflect on what is, or should be, the proper role of political parties in our current political environment, and that reflection is the subject matter of this article, which I wish to share with others, as a little contribution to 'political education' for the benefit of those of our readers who are interested in this particular subject.
The ban on political rallies is one critical lesson in political education. It is a critical lesson because it focuses on the important question of what is, or should be, the proper role of political parties in the governance system of our country?
The said role is amply clarified in the Political Parties Act (no.5 of 1992), which gives the following definition of a political party: "Political party" means any organized group which is formed for the purpose of forming a Government, or Local Authority within the United Republic, through elections; or for putting up or supporting candidates to such elections".
Therefore, in the context of this definition, the primary purpose, or indeed the raison d'être of any political party in Tanzania, is to participate in elections with a view to acquiring political power, both at the national and the Local Authority levels.
This means that any group of persons which does not adhere to these clearly articulated aims and objectives, does not qualify to be registered as a political party. It could perhaps be registered only as a 'society' under the relevant law relating to the registration of societies. In other words, the primary role of political parties in Tanzania, is to participate in elections, whenever they are due.
Participating in elections of course includes organizing campaign rallies all over the country, within a time frame which is normally provided by the National Electoral Commission.
In my humble opinion, this is the critical lesson which the National Chairman of the Tanzania Labour party, Augustine Mrema, was endeavouring to deliver in his statement quoted above.
Mr Mrema continued as follows: "When we were campaigning for votes prior to election day last year, we did not promise the people of endless political activities, we promised to improve their welfare, and that is what they expect . . . the nation building task is not a concern only for President Magufuli and the ruling party, it is a concern for all Tanzanians irrespective of their political affiliation".
He eventually concluded thus: "Uncontrolled democracy is ruinous. We should not allow this to happen in our country". Mr Mrema was entirely right in his comments which, indeed, constitute a critical lesson in one of the essential aspects of multi-party political education. But there are other lessons which also need to be given in the genera subject of 'political education' in our current political environment of multi-party politics.
What follows below is a little contribution in support of Mr Mrema's magnificent endeavours which are aimed at imparting the said political education. The rule of thumb in the multi-party political culture.
In a different article which was published earlier in this column, I discussed the important matter of the need to develop a multi-party political culture, in view of the fact that the system of multi-party politics is still relatively new in our country, having been re-introduced recently in the early 1990s, after more than thirty years of single-party politics.
There is a 'rule of thumb' of the multi-party political culture which should be remembered, which is that after any competitive general election (which is normally conducted through public campaign rallies) has determined the winners and the losers; political competition between them does not stop there.
Such competition indeed continues, except that the venue of this competition now changes from public rallies to Parliament, and ceases to take place through public rallies or demonstrations. This is applicable to all multiparty jurisdictions worldwide, and not only to Tanzania.
For example, in the year 2000, violation of this 'rule of thumb' in the Caribbean nations led the Prime Minister of Grenada, the Hon. Dr Keith Mitchell. MP to lament as follows: "The Caribbean people have long had a reputation for passionate partisan debate in the adversarial form of parliamentary democracy inherited from Westminster.
But they also enjoyed a reputation for playing by the rules, namely that the winners of the arguments (at a general election) took office, while the losers continued the debate from the Opposition benches inside Parliament, and prepared for the next election. But to day, in an alarming number of instances, passionate political debates are being continued not in Parliament, but in the streets.
And they are being pressed not by debate, but by street demonstrations. Our acceptance of the parliamentary system is being seriously eroded". Political parties are the essence of parliamentary democracy.
In the British-based parliamentary system which we inherited at the time of independence, political parties are the essence of parliamentary democracy, in the sense that the party which wins a majority of the parliamentary seats at a general election, gets the right to form the Government of the day.
It can of course e argued that this arrangement is not wholly satisfactory, for two reasons: One is that under this system, large numbers of the people who voted for the losing political parties will be governed for the specified period of five years by a political party whose policies they presumably disagree with; and the other is that capable men and women who belong to the losing parties, plus all those who do not belong to any political party, can play no effective role in the governance of the country during the relevant period.
However, such criticisms notwithstanding, political parties are absolutely essential, for they do have certain basic functions to perform. These are that:
(i) They provide a stable base for the government of the country.
This is because the political party which forms the Government will be implementing the policies and programmes which were explained extensively to the electorate during the campaign period, and presumably received the endorsement and approval of a majority of the electorate on election day, by being given the mandate to govern.
(ii) They perform the 'interest aggregation' function. This means that they process the various demands which are routinely made upon the political system and convert such demands into policy guidelines.
(iii) They provide a suitable and convenient forum for the participation of a substantially large number of individual citizens in the country's political process. This is because political parties are the most powerful and fully accepted agents for political socialization, in the sense that they provide a solution to the problem of how to maintain a responsive polity without subjecting it to full individual citizen involvement.
Thus, unless some particular interest of an individual is at stake, that individual does not have to engage in extensive and continuous articulation of his general interest. His political party will normally take care of such general interests, with minimal personal involvement of its individual members.
This is what gives political parties absolutely centrality in the organization and conduct of elections. The proper role of political parties. Let me now come back to the substantive question: what, then, is the proper role of political parties?
We have already noted above, that in the light of the definition of a 'political party' which is provided in the Political Parties Act (no. 5 of 1995); the proper role of political parties is to participate in elections, with the aim of winning the relevant election and forming the Government, either at the national level, or the Local Authority levels. In the light of this definition, three major roles can be identified.
These are: (a) Candidate selection;(b) Organization and management of the election campaign; and (c) Voter identification and targeting. What follows below is an elaboration of these roles.
(a) For any participating political party, candidate selection is the first and most crucial step in the entire election process. A conspicuous mistake in selecting a suitable candidate can easily result in the party losing the election in the relevant constituency (in the case of parliamentary elections); or Ward in the case of Local Authority elections.
This was exactly what happened to Chama cha Mapinduzi, particularly during the 2010 general elections, when a number of suitable candidates were unfairly denied selection by the party. These candidates quickly moved to other parties where they secured selection, and went on to win the election in their respective constituencies. I later described this development as a 'selfinflicted injury' on the part of CCM.
It was a self-inflicted injury because it was deliberately brought about by the party's own negligent actions. One good lesson to be learnt from this incident, is that it shows that some of our voters tend to vote for the candidate himself, rather than for his political party. In other words, it is the acceptability of the individual candidate that attracts voters, more than the acceptability of the political party which sponsored him.
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This is what makes the process of candidate selection to be of crucial importance. (b) After the parties have completed the process of candidate selection and submitted the names of such candidates to the National Electoral Commission, the next critical role of political parties, is to organize and manage the election campaign, which is to be carried out within the time frame provided by the Commission.
The primary purpose of an election campaign is to send strong messages to the votes, which will hopefully convince a majority of them to vote for the relevant party.
(c) There is yet another important role for political parties, which I have described above as 'voter identification and targeting'. This is otherwise known as the "getthe- votes" strategy, whose purpose is to attract as many of the party's supporters as possible to the polling stations on election day to vote for the party's candidates.
This 'voter targeting' is a rather complex undertaking, because it entails the making of a detailed analysis in order to identify the three different categories of voters who have to be addressed differently.
The first category consists of persons who support the party very strongly; the second category consists of those who oppose the party equally strongly; and the third category consists of those persons who are either undecided, or uncommitted.
These are persons whose preferences are not so rigid, and could therefore be changed by the impact of the election campaign. But in addition to these two major categories of 'strong supporters' and 'strong opponents', there is this other significant category of electors who may be described as 'positive abstainers'.
It is too often taken for granted that all those people who have registered themselves for a given election, will in fact turn up to vote at their designated polling stations on election day, except perhaps a few who might be prevented from doing so because of illness, sudden travel out of their polling areas.
But, in fact, there some people who deliberately decide to abstain from going to cast their votes, because either the candidates do not appeal to them, or for some other unknown reason. So they just stay at home as a form of protest.
This is actually what happened in the 2010 general elections, when only 42% of the registered voters actually turned up to cast their votes on polling day! As part of the strategy to mobilize votes, an experienced political party will also attempt to reach out to these abstainer groups during its campaign, with a view to persuading them to change their habits.
