Tanzanian ruling party presidential candidate for Zanzibar launches campaign

Tanzania's ruling revolutionary party of Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) presidential candidate for Zanzibar Ali Mohamed Shein has launched the party's election campaigns in the Indian Ocean archipelago with a commitment for agriculture development through use of modern farming technology and maximum use of irrigation.

At a registered turn up record on Saturday in Zanzibar, Shein noted that his government would maintain good governance, noting that CCM is in a position to apply good governance in its leadership, the local newspaper Daily News reported on Sunday.

He said that he would uphold and implement CCM's manifesto and policies and that he would sustain two-government structure of the Union government and Zanzibar government, opposing the Civic United Front (CUF)'s three-tier government.

The CCM's policy has always upheld two governments for the past 46 years and he will continue to uphold this in order to protect the Union for the public benefit, said Shein.

With the attendance of CCM high level officials, from Tanzania mainland and Zanzibar, the campaign rally were preceded by songs, dancing and reading of poems and Shein also promised to continue bringing development to the Isles if voted to leadership.

In Zanzibar, 66.4 percent people in Tanzania's Indian Ocean archipelago of Zanzibar voted in favor of the formation of government of national unity after the amendment of the constitution in July, indicating that rivalry witnessed in the previous elections since 1995 will be unlikely after the election this year.

Under the proposed structure of a government of national unity likely to be formed after the next elections, if Shein wins the presidential election in Zanzibar, CUF's Seif Sharif Hamad would become First Vice-president of Zanzibar, and the second vice president would come from CCM.

Tanzania is considered Africa's most politically stable country, where the ruling party CCM has been in power for the past 49 years and there have been four successive transfers of power.

The local, legislative and presidential polls on Oct. 31 are the country's fourth since the re-introduction of multi-party politics in 1992 in the east African country with the current population of more than 40 million.


Xinhua