Tanzania election failed to comply with democratic standards: African Union

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The bloc says ballot stuffing, net blackout and politically-motivated abductions compromised the vote’s ‘integrity’.

Published On 5 Nov 2025

Last week’s Tanzania elections failed to comply with antiauthoritarian standards, says the African Union (AU), adding to mounting planetary unit connected President Samia Suluhu Hassan’s medication implicit the deadly vote.

The AU’s predetermination monitoring limb – which sent a squad of 72 observers to Tanzania and Zanzibar for the October 29 election – connected Wednesday pointed to ballot stuffing, the government-imposed net blackout, allegations of excessive subject force, and politically-motivated abductions arsenic “compromising predetermination integrity”.

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The predetermination “did not comply with AU principles, normative frameworks, and different planetary obligations and standards for antiauthoritarian elections”, the mission’s report concluded, adding that the situation was “not conducive to peaceful behaviour and acceptance of electoral outcomes”.

Protesters poured into the streets of Dar es Salaam and different cities pursuing the election, wherever they faced constabulary violence, clouds of teardrop state and constricted net access.

The country’s main absorption party, Chadema, has since claimed hundreds of radical were killed, a fig the authorities has denied.

Videos reviewed by Al Jazeera amusement dozens of bodies, including of radical changeable successful the head, protesters with bloodied faces, and information forces firing guns successful the streets.

The AU’s ngo urged Tanzanian authorities to workout restraint and prosecute “thorough investigations” into unit against protesters.

“Tanzania should prioritise electoral and governmental reforms to code the basal causes of its antiauthoritarian and electoral challenges witnessed up of, during, and aft the 2025 General Elections,” the study said.

The AU study came amid different uncommon rebuke from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) earlier this week, which elaborate violence, censorship and “general intimidation” of the nationalist and absorption figures.

Overall, “voters could not explicit their antiauthoritarian will”, SADC said successful a preliminary study connected Monday, adding that the elections “fell short” of SADC principles.

Hassan swept astir 98 percent of the ballot aft her 2 main competitors were barred from competing. Chadema was disqualified successful April aft refusing to motion an electoral codification of conduct, portion the country’s second-biggest party, ACT-Wazalendo, was excluded aft an objection from the lawyer general.

Chadema’s person Tundu Lissu separately faces a treason trial aft calling for predetermination reforms.

SADC chronicled specified events directly, penning that the disqualifications had created an “uneven governmental playing field” that undermined the antiauthoritarian process.

The past clip SADC openly criticised an African predetermination process was during Zimbabwe’s predetermination successful 2023. It has since observed a fistful of different elections, including successful Malawi, Botswana, South Africa, Madagascar and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

In her archetypal comments aft being sworn in, Hassan appeared to blasted foreigners for the protests, saying “it was not a astonishment that those arrested were from different countries”, according to a translation by the Associated Press.

Hassan archetypal took powerfulness successful 2021 aft the unexpected decease of her predecessor, John Magufuli.

Since then, section and planetary watchdogs person repeatedly raised the alarm implicit her administration’s alleged run of forced disappearances, torture and battle of critics, arsenic good arsenic wide media repression.

In June, a sheet of United Nations experts said they had documented much than 200 disappearances successful the state since 2019.

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