The CCM Nominates a President: an Incomplete

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 DAR ES SALAAM 000908

SIPDIS

DEPARTMENT FOR AF/E AND INR/AA

E.O. 12958: 5/9/15
TAGS: PGOV TZ
SUBJECT: The CCM Nominates a President: an Incomplete
Democratic Transition


Classified by Pol-Econ Chief Judy Buelow for reason
1.4(b)

REF: A) Dar es Salaam 888, B) Dar es Salaam 855,
C) Dar es Salaam 832, D) Dar es Salaam 732 and
previous


1. (C) Summary: It's only the second week of May, but
the October Presidential election has already been
decided, now that the ruling CCM party has selected
Jakaye Kikwete as its nominee. Over a decade after
the introduction of multiparty democracy in Tanzania,
the CCM is still a juggernaut that easily overwhelms a
fragile and fragmented opposition. Far from taking
CCM predominance for granted, the party loyalists who
gathered in Dodoma revealed their determination to
maintain party unity, and to safeguard against any
future encroachments by the opposition. The CCM's
week-long nomination extravaganza also revealed a
persistent nostalgia for the old single party state,
and a convenient confusion between the roles of the
government and the party. The CCM still relies on
international solidarity from other current (or
recovering) single-party states, especially Zimbabwe.
Tanzania installed the mechanism of competitive
democratic elections years ago, but it will be many
years more before fully democratic practices take root
and flourish. End Summary.

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Debate and Reconciliation within the CCM Family
-------------- --


2. (U) Foreign Minister Kikwete's nomination to the
Presidency was not exactly a surprise, but CCM
watchers had envisioned many scenarios which could
have produced a different nominee. Kikwete was always
the front runner, with many allies among the top
echelons of the party. Nonetheless, many other party
luminaries, possibly including President Mkapa
himself, strongly opposed Kikwete and were prepared to
block his candidacy. Many of the Embassy's government
contacts quietly favored Salim Salim, an intellectual
with long previous service as Foreign Minister and the
OAU Secretary General. Prime Minister Sumaye clearly
believed that he had a chance to prevail, despite his
lackluster campaign and rumored personal corruption;
he was noticeably embittered after he was knocked out
in the early rounds of the CCM nomination process. A
deadlock was not out of the question; prior to the CCM
nomination event in Dodoma, the rumor mill focused on
plausible dark horse candidates who might step into
the breech.


3. (SBU) A party insider described late nights and
acrimony during the first two rounds of the nomination
process, which narrowed the original field of eleven
declared candidates down to five, and then three.
These two rounds were conducted in private, first in
the Central Committee, and then in the National
Executive Committee (NEC). The NEC membership
consists of some 200 individuals, including all of the
36 members of the Central Committee. President Mkapa
is also the Chairman of the CCM, and in this capacity,
he chairs both of these entities and the Party
Congress. In addition to holding top party posts, the
members of the NEC and the Central Committee are
Ministers, Members of Parliament, and other top
government officials. These individuals are the de
facto leaders of both the CCM party and the
Government.


4. (U) The CCM Party Congress, technically the highest
organ of the CCM, then convened to elect the nominee
from the three finalists. The Party Congress convenes
once every five years for its regular sessions, with
additional extraordinary sessions to nominate CCM
candidates for electoral office. The Party Congress
includes the members of the Central Committee and the
NEC, with the balance of its nearly 1800 members
consisting of mid-level CCM functionaries from all
over the country. When the Party Congress finally
voted, it was a model of transparency. Each member
marked a ballot in secret, and cast it in one of
several ballot boxes that appeared to have been
borrowed from the National Electoral Commission. In
the Congress, Kikwete won the party's nomination
overwhelmingly, on the first ballot.


5. (SBU) For all the procedural correctness of the
vote, it is probably safe to assume that most
delegates to the CCM Party Congress had been strongly
influenced by corridor discussions with the NEC and
Central Committee members in their midst. The Party
Congress was above all a ceremonial event, and an
opportunity to reaffirm CCM ideals. Diplomats,
representatives of foreign "sister parties," and the
press all turned out in force to the Party's massive,
if under-utilized, headquarters building on a Dodoma
hilltop. Delegates, like convention-goers everywhere,
wanted to have a good time. Virtually everybody wore
an emerald green shirt and a bright yellow cap, and
stood ready to wave miniature CCM flags and shout
party slogans on command, usually to the beat of
traditional music. The vote to amend the CCM party
constitution provided an interesting contrast to the
vote for the nominee. The whole Congress adopted, by
noisy acclaim and with nary a dissenting voice, a
series of amendments that further increased the NEC's
power in the party and in the government itself.

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The Voters Watch Hopefully from the Outside
--------------


6. (U) While there are no reliable national opinion
polls, it is a safe bet that the Congress' choice of
Kikwete is popular with the man in the street.
Charismatic and personable, Kikwete gained visibility
during his 1995 candidacy for the presidency. In that
contest Kikwete had also been one of the three
finalists, and he had received more votes than any
other candidate in the first round of voting. In the
end, however, he lost out to compromise candidate
Mkapa, after the 1995 Party Congress deadlocked. Over
the years, many of our Tanzanian interlocutors have
expressed disappointment with that outcome and hope
that Kikwete would eventually prevail.

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Party Unity above All Considerations
--------------


7. (C) For now, however, it's the CCM party
leadership, and not the man in the street, who really
elects Tanzania's President. The three finalists'
speeches before the Congress revealed an electoral
campaign directed exclusively to the 1,800 people who
represent the top party organs. The speeches
contained almost no appeals to the wider national
electorate: no promises of a chicken in every pot,
few sentimental references to the Tanzanian family,
and very little reference to policy at all, beyond a
generalized commitment to eradicate poverty. Each
finalist emphasized his personal qualifications, in
keeping with the guidelines for selecting presidential
candidates that the party had established earlier in
the electoral cycle. The finalists all emphasized
their educational achievements, their loyalty and long
service in the government and the party (making little
distinction between the two),and their dedication to
maintaining the Union between mainland Tanganyika and
Zanzibar.


8. (SBU) National Unity was a theme common to all
speakers who addressed the Party Congress, including
the three finalists, President Mkapa, and a comedian
who mimicked the mannerisms and the aphorisms of the
late President Nyerere. The speakers all portrayed
the CCM as the guardian of national unity, defending
Tanzania from the dissolution of the union with
Zanzibar, and from all manner of tribalism,
regionalism or ideological dissention. Several called
for the CCM to stand firm against any growth of the
opposition, implying that political opposition
threatened Tanzania's enviable peace and stability.
In this, the opinions and attitudes expressed in the
Congress probably do not differ much from those of the
average mainland Tanzanian.

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Bowing to the Inevitability of Kikwete
--------------


9. (C) Kikwete's nomination reflected the unspoken
recognition that the CCM could not lose this election
to any of Tanzania's struggling opposition parties,
but the CCM could be defeated someday by an internal
schism. As the nomination process worked its way
through the party mechanism, it became evident that
the CCM would make every effort to safeguard party
unity in 2005, in order to preserve CCM predominance
over the long term. Speaking in his capacity as CCM
Party Chairman, Mkapa called for a candidate who was
"electable," warning that that if the CCM's choice of
candidate disappointed the people, they would drift to
the opposition. Mkapa also urged the CCM to build
support among Tanzania's young people. Kikwete is
believed to have his strongest base of support among
the party's youth wing, so many observers interpreted
this exhortation as a signal that Mkapa was throwing
his support to Kikwete's candidacy, even if he had
opposed it before. All of the CCM's losing candidates
conceded to Kikwete, and most did so graciously.


10. (C) It appears that most CCM party luminaries
decided that, whatever their personal preferences,
Kikwete was simply too strong to pass over or ignore.
Because of his base of fervent supporters in the party
and in the public, Kikwete may be one of the few CCM
leaders with the capacity to mount a plausible
electoral campaign outside of the party structure.
The CCM opted against disappointing Kikwete again in
2005, forestalling the risk that he could leave the
CCM and take his supporters with him.

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The Zanzibar factor
--------------


11. (C) Troublesome little Zanzibar is the one big
exception to the rule of CCM predominance. Zanzibar
is semi-autonomous, electing its own President and
House of Representatives. If the October elections on
Zanzibar are free and fair, Zanzibaris are quite
likely to elect the opposition CUF party to head their
government. In the Congress, numerous CCM speakers
implied that opposition gains threatened Tanzania's
peace, stability, and continuation of the Union
itself.


12. (C) Behind the scenes, the party leaders in the
NEC and the Central Committee apparently went all out
to shore up the CCM's faltering presence on Zanzibar.
Just two days before the Party Congress convened,
intense pressure from these officials persuaded
Mohamed Gharib Bilal to relinquish his candidacy for
the Zanzibari Presidency. Consequently, the Party
Congress never voted on its candidate for the Zanzibar
Presidency, and the incumbent President Karume never
had to face an embarrassing challenge from within his
own party. Zanzibaris in the CCM were presumably
disappointed by the nominee to the National
presidency. They might have expected the party would
nominate one of their own, such as Pemba Island native
Salim Salim. In nominating mainlander Kikwete,
however, the CCM broke with the incipient tradition of
alternating Zanzibaris with mainlanders in the top
office. Outside observers can only speculate about
what else the CCM inner circle might have promised to
the party's hard-pressed Zanzibar contingent. The
most burning question is one that has occupied Western
diplomats and opposition CUF politicians for months:
would the CCM again turn a blind eye if its Zanzibar
contingent thought it needed to cheat to win elections
in the Isles?

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Reaffirming International Solidarity
--------------


13. (C) Of the many foreign guests at the CCM Party
Congress, the most honored were the representatives of
various national "sister" parties. Some of these
represented the Communist Parties of single party
states; many others represented former sole parties
that still dominate the emerging multiparty system in
their countries. The Chinese and Cuban Communist
Parties sent representatives; so did South Africa's
ANC, Mozambique's FRELIMO, Angola's MPLA, and the
Congo's PPRD. The unchallenged queen of the gathering
was Zimbabwean Ambassador Chipo Zindoga, representing
ZANU-PF. Recognized from the podium and escorted
conspicuously by her South African counterpart, Chipo
was clearly well-known and popular with the CCM rank
and file at the Congress.

14. (C) A group of Western diplomats attending the
Congress recalled that Dar es Salaam had once been a
haven for revolutionaries from throughout southern
Africa. Political leaders from Tanzania, Uganda,
Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe not only have an
ideological affinity; many of them also have a
personal relationship that dates to the Dar es Salaam
of the 1970s and 1980s. Some of the diplomats
commented on the sobering implications of this
regional solidarity, especially among the SADC
countries. They considered Tanzania's recent and very
public support of Zimbabwe to be a signal that the
region's sister parties intend to close ranks in
defense of an "African" version of democracy, and to
overlook any undemocratic techniques these sister
parties might use to perpetuate their power.


15. (C) Comment: The CCM's week-long nomination
extravaganza begs the question: just how democratic
is Tanzania? Clearly, Tanzania is more democratic
than it was in 1970s, when founding father President
Nyerere consolidated single party rule and a state-
directed economy. The 1992 introduction of a multi-
party system opened a space for political competition.
Democratic institutions such as the National Electoral
Commission have built their technical expertise and
gained experience in conducting elections. The public
has had time to get used to the idea that, just maybe,
political competition is natural, that policy debate
doesn't lead inevitably to tribal conflict and
instability, and that an opposition government on
Zanzibar won't necessarily break up the Tanzania
Union. Someday, perhaps years hence, a strong
opposition party will emerge on the mainland, or the
CCM will split, and the voters will be presented with
a real electoral choice. In the meantime, the
Tanzanians have the chance to develop the political
maturity and the strong democratic institutions that
may enable them to complete their transition to
democracy peacefully. For now, however, the CCM party
has chosen its candidate, and the 2005 presidential
election is all over with except for the voting. End
Comment.


16. (U) Please see Embassy Dar es Salaam's SIPRNet
site for a complete update and background on the
Tanzanian elections.

OWEN