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Abolition of takrima: Real victory or Liliputian strings on campaigns?
2006-05-06 09:01:49
By Ani Jozeni
Fanfare went up in quite a few legal and activist quarters, usually identified as human rights activists, after the High Court threw out the Miscellaneous Amendments on the Elections Act of 1985, completed in the forenoon of the year 2000 ready for the general elections.
There was a mix up in comprehension of the issue as the court (three judges of the High Court) issued the view that the old act was sufficient to provide room for judges to determine if money spent for one or other act was corrupt or not.
There was thus no need for special provisions directly permitting ’takrima.’
How far this is the case, at least in terms of the intention of the legislature isn’t quote obvious.
For it was absolutely evident at that time that the courts were truly and evidently in a position to determine if some gifts or use of cash at a particular moment constituted an attempt to influence the voting.
The issue that the legislature set out to resolve was the load of litigation that arose from using cash in campaign, and implicitly, repudiating the idea that wishing to influence the vote was something inimical to free polls as such.
After the provisions were cancelled, and assuming that the fourth phase administration isn’t in a position either to appeal the ruling or bring it back to the legislature in a different form, the issue is what next.
What the three judges did not seem to actually take into account is that the passing of the so-called ’takrima’ provisions was partially to reduce the load of litigation, in relation to poll results.
There was the 5m/-rule of entering a petition, which could in due course also be quashed – with better reason than the takrima issue – also meant to discourage electoral litigation where there aren’t compelling reasons justifying collecting such a sum to file a case.
The difficulty with mapping out ’what next’ follows after the takrima issue was resolved by the High Court, is what the decision represents.
For the hue and cry about takrima is really a protest about abandoning the older methods in which polls were conducted, where they were both ruling party candidates and merely extolled their personal qualities, and grasp of the party’s election manifesto.
Candidates were not required to make an extra effort to meet the people, undercut someone’s presence by entertaining people or promising one or other thing from private resources during the polls period, or give out identifying paraphernalia like T-shirts, khangas etc.
This is the mainstay of the use of ’takrima’ in actual fact or as regards the disputed legal provisions.
There are thus two ways in which one can celebrate the revoking or deleting from the law books of the ’Election Campaigns (Special Provisions) Act’ of 2000, especially to the law circles among ’human rights’ (or say socialism) activists.
One is to expect that the political culture in election campaigns will go back to the mid 1980s, when there were no full throttle election contests in a multiparty context, and thus its ethics will come back. Anyone seeking to influence voters by issuing hoes a month before the vote is deemed guilty.
That might indeed be the major reason for the dining and wining within the socialist activist circles, wishing to see merely an ethic of serving the people by implementing a party manifesto, not flaunting wealth, distributing gifts, and most heinous of all, calling people to ’pilau’ during campaigns.
This quite short sighted litany of complaints is tied up with values of the older Leadership Code, that the aspirant parliamentarian as well as the outgoing one are essentially penniless people.
They are workers and peasants - as the formula goes - who can’t therefore have money to give ’pilau’ or throw gifts at the voters. If they have cash it is bribes from Indians, that’s unacceptable.
Unless this culture is really likely to come back, in which presumed wrong doers will be quite few, the problem of purposeless litigation once a person (who believes in himself far more than the voters do) loses at the polls will be on the rise again..
Immediately as the voting ends, the High Court has to abandon all civil and criminal cases to start sorting out poll disputes, which shall worsen if the 5m/- fee for depositing sworn affidavits to open a case on election results will have been quashed as well.
For it contains germs of a ’justice of the rich’ who can afford 5m/- in fees without falling into bad debt.
But then the climate around us hardly suggests that this will be the case, as parliamentarians get upwards of 40m/- by the time they finish their term of office, and it is only natural that they spend a portion of such money to try and retain their seats.
Even if they wouldn’t have received their benefits yet, it would be sufficient to obtain a testimonial to that effect for a bank to put up say 20% of the same, if not substantially more, for the campaign.
But the ’human rights activists’ are out to ensure that the cash be used to fill petrol into a car, or buy food for five campaign assistants seated in one table at a hotel, otherwise it becomes ’takrima’ if there are ten of them. Foolish, is it?
The other reason for celebrating would be far less idealistic and much more cynical, that lawyers will now have plenty to do after elections, as takrima will be there without any doubt at all.
And since this shall be in breach of the law, not only will more failing candidates seek to litigate but they stand a far better chance of winning.
What more could the law tribe seek from its gods, whose grace is giving them not just so many more cases but also more wins?
Whether the High Court is as happy as its other ’officers of the court’ is a bit different, for they have no direct stake in litigating electoral offences as such – unless perhaps this may invite ’takrima’ of a different order in predictably large numbers.
Shelving this excessively cynical view of the ruling, it may in part suggest that the court opted to award a point to the deafening noise on the ’special provisions’ of 2000, enabling ’life to go on.’
Without decisions of this sort from time to time civic agitation becomes pointless, staid, empty.
Nor is it likely that with this ruling, more work shall be done to bring to light what candidate Jakaya Kikwete maintained was a need to set out clearly in the law regulations about funding election campaigns.
It isn’t possible to do any of that in a sociopolitical environment which detests property, hates one portion of the population which is most able to make campaign donations, etc.
It means that secrecy will be maintained, and to avoid pointless court wrangles, ’corruption’ will be defined in a more intense manner than was the case during Ujamaa. It means the takrima provisions stand despite the ruling.
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