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Polls date now December 14
2005-11-03 07:13:39
By Joyce Mkinga
The National Electoral Commission (NEC) has announced a new date for the Union general election.
NEC chairman Judge Lewis Makame announced in Dar es Salaam yesterday that the electoral body had brought forward the election date to December 14 from December 18 in response to calls to shorten the period to reduce expenses.
Judge Makame said that since Wednesday is a working day, NEC had petitioned the government to make it a holiday to give people time to vote.
The general election, which had been scheduled for October 30 were postponed to December 18 following the death of Chadema vice presidential candidate Jumbe Rajabu Jumbe on October 26.
Since then, there have been calls to bring the date forward to reduce government and political parties’ expenses.
Judge Makame said that NEC had considered the proposals and made the alterations on the based cost implications.
Judge Makame said if the elections were to be held on different dates it would have cost the government 13.6bn/-.
He said that NEC now needs an extra 5.3bn/- to print new election materials.
However, Judge Makame said NEC could not condense the time for Chadema to appoint a running mate because the 21 days the party was given are in line with the existing law.
NEC will also need seven days to distribute the ballot papers to 232 constituencies, and then to 48,760 polling centres in the country, he said.
The exercise would be co-ordinated from district headquarters.
Judge Makame said that the printing of ballot papers would have taken 20 days, but NEC was in serious discussion with the printer to do it in 17 days.
’This made NEC to bring forward the election date by four days,’he said.
Judge Makame said NEC would be able to reduce its expenses, especially allowances for 6,000 election officials, by four days.
The campaigns for presidential candidates would resume on November 19 and end on December 13.
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