The votes in Tanzania’s October 31 election were counted well before the vote, according to critics and cynics.

For that reason, victory by the ruling Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM or Party of the Revolution) and a second term for President Jakaya Kikwete, were assured long ago.

True, CCM has a reputation as a vote-stealing party. However, the bad news for those who want to see the reign of CCM and such long-ruling parties end, is that the longer they stay in power, the longer they are able to stay in power.

Take Mexico’s Institutional Revo-lutionary Party ( PRI), which ruled the country for 70 years from 1929 to December 2009, when it lost power to Vicente Fox’s National Action Party. The PRI was a CCM-type party, complete with a reputation for corruption and vote-fiddling.

However, it renewed itself constantly through internal leadership changes. In its 70-year rule, it had a record 42 party presidents, meaning each of them led the party for an average of 1.6 years.

It also offered up 14 national presidents, so the average term of a Mexican president during the PRI days was five years.

We see the same pattern in Botswana, which has been ruled by the Botswana Democratic Party and presidents elected in free elections since Independence in 1966. It has had four presidents. Thus Botswana’s big men stay in State House for an average of 11 years.

Now, take CCM. From Independence in 1961, when it was the Tanganyika African National Union, Kikwete is its fourth leader. Though my man Julius Nyerere hogged power for 24 years, the average presidential rule in Tanzania is 12.3 years.

The problem for these behemoth parties comes when they fail to circulate internal leaders quickly. By 2002, when Kanu lost elections in Kenya, it had been in power for 38 years and had only two presidents, thus an average of 19 years at that time. Compare that to PRI. The Kenyan party’s decay can partly be attributed to that.

For that reason, the future cannot be bright for politicians in Uganda’s National Resistance Movement.

President Yoweri Museveni has been firmly perched as its leader for 28 years. And he has been national president for 24 years.

If CCM follows the PRI’s route, then it stay in power until at least 2031!
The biggest risk that these long-ruling parties face is implosion from internal power struggles. The PRI was weakened after its left wing broke off to form the Party of the Democratic Revolution in 1989.

In Kenya, Kanu’s demise was all but guaranteed after its “progressive” wing broke off in late 2002 to join President Mwai Kibaki in the opposition, and to form the National Rainbow Coalition that went on to win the polls.

My own sense is that CCM’s internal tensions are playing out differently, with the reformists looking to seize control of it and to worm their way into influential state positions, not to jump ship and form different parties.

Which is why party feuds can be counterproductive, because sometimes parties reinvent themselves in the process, and thus become appealing to voters again.

Charles Onyango-Obbo is Nation Media Group’s executive editor for Africa & Digital Media. E-mail: [email protected]