Zanzibar opposition leader Seif Sharif Hamad on Tuesday claimed victory in the hotly contested race for the presidency of the semi-autonomous Tanzanian archipelago amid new clashes over weekend elections.
”Now, I know I am the winner,” Seif Sharif Hamad of the Civic United Front (CUF) told reporters, citing results from Sunday’s polls compiled by the opposition giving him a slight edge over incumbent President Amani Abeid Karume.
He declined to discuss details but CUF national president Ibrahim Lipumba said Hamad had won by a ”very small margin” despite alleged massive vote fraud committed by Karume’s ruling Revolutionary Party (CCM).
Lipumba said the CCM’s attempt to steal the elections had failed but predicted the Zanzibar Electoral Commission (ZEC) would still announce results giving the ruling party victory.
”We believe that our candidate has won the election despite all the attempts at rigging,” he said.
”He has won by a very small margin [but] we have heard that the ZEC will announce CCM as the winner as usual.”
The ZEC, which is expected to announce final results no earlier than Wednesday, has not issued any preliminary returns from the presidential race but on Tuesday said the CCM won a majority of seats in the semi-autonomous islands’ Parliament.
With results from 40 of 50 constituencies in, the commission said the CCM had won 24 seats in Zanzibar’s House of Representatives to the CUF’s 16.
The CUF victory announcement came at a news conference called after police fired teargas at hundreds of CUF supporters outside the party’s headquarters in a third straight day of clashes in Zanzibar’s main city of Stone Town.
About 20 people were wounded, some overcome by acrid fumes and others hit by canisters, when riot police used teargas and stun grenades to disperse the crowd, witnesses said.
Red Cross and Médécins Sans Frontières emergency vehicles ferried some of the wounded from the scene outside the CUF office in the Darajani area of the city, where tension remained high after the melee, an Agence France Presse photographer said.
Diplomats on Unguja, the larger of Zanzibar’s two main islands, said roads leading into Stone Town had been sealed off and the United States embassy in Tanzania issued a warning to Americans in the archipelago to remain indoors.
”We wish to underline that this remains a highly volatile situation that could erupt into widespread violence with no warning,” it said in a notice issued late on Monday.
The alert was issued after a second day of clashes between police and oppposition supporters in which at least 13 people had been wounded, two by gunshots, before Tuesday’s clashes, according to hospital officials.
The ZEC and CCM have both pronounced the elections ”free and fair” and foreign observers have praised the vote as generally well run, despite the sporadic violence and opposition charges of fraud.
The CCM has dominated Tanzanian politics for more than 40 years but is facing a stiff challenge from the CUF on Zanzibar, an opposition stronghold where distrust of the mainland runs high.
Hamad claims the CCM stole the two previous multiparty elections on the islands in 1995 and 2000 and has vowed to lead mass street protests and a Ukraine-style revolution if this year’s polls are rigged.
Nearly 200 people were wounded during clashes in the run-up to Sunday’s elections and fears of wider unrest are high, particularly since more than 30 people were killed in violence after the last vote. – AFP
