President Yoweri Museveni has congratulated his Tanzanian counterpart John Pombe Magufuli upon being declared winner of the just-concluded elections.
Magufuli won a resounding election with 84 per cent of the votes in a poll his main rival said was riddled with irregularities such as ballot box stuffing.
“Congratulations to His Excellency John Pombe Magufuli and Chama Cha Mapinduzi Party on the resounding victory in the just-concluded elections. Uganda looks forward to working even more closely with you and the people of Tanzania to deepen our social, economic and political ties. Hongera!” Museveni said
“The commission declares John Magufuli of CCM (Chama Cha Mapinduzi) who garnered the majority of votes as the winner in the presidential seat.” said commission chairman Semistocles Kaijage.
Voter turnout was 50.7 per cent from more than 29 million voters, with over 260,000 votes declared invalid.
No final results were given for the parliamentary results however Magufuli’s ruling CCM had earlier won all but two seats, with around 200 of 264 parliamentary seats announced.
In 2015, Magufuli won with only 58 percent of the vote.
Lissu, who returned to Tanzania in July after three years abroad recovering from 16 bullet wounds sustained in an assassination attempt, declared that the results coming in were ‘illegitimate’ and urged his supporters to demonstrate peacefully, asking the international community not to recognise the outcome.
“Whatever happened yesterday was not an election, and thus we do not recognise it. We do not accept the result,” Lissu told reporters, saying opposition election monitors had been barred from entering polling stations and faced other interference.
“What is being presented to the world is a complete fraud. It is not an election.”
The US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Tibor Nagy, said; “we remain deeply concerned about reports of systematic interference in the democratic process. We continue to review credible allegations of the use of force against unarmed civilians,” he said in a tweet.
