By JENERALI ULIMWENGU

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The rickety electoral machinery running our elections slogs on despite the grunts, coughs and wheezes, and may just manage to get us to polling day without a major catastrophe.

But for the wise and the prudent it is all the time necessary to pay heed to the calamities that did not come to pass although they could have very well happened. That we get away with potential dangers unscathed does not guarantee us we will always escape harm.

If we allow ourselves to take proper stock we will accept that our elections are taking place in a fraught environment in which most of the formations claiming to be of the opposition are disgruntled with the way the contest is governed.

For a long time now, there have been calls to rethink the way we hold our elections, alongside many other concerns, in what can be categorised as a quest for a constitutional dispensation allowing for greater transparency.

When in 2010, out of the blue, then president Jakaya Kikwete announced that he was setting up a constitution review team to draft a new supreme law, some were elated that the president had literally suffered this stroke of genius that gave him such farsightedness that had not been forced by any contrarian political pressure from his political opponents. He was just being good for the sake of being good.

A high-powered coterie of political, civic and academic brains was brought together under the chairmanship of (who else?) Joseph Warioba, the man for all seasons when it comes to fixing whatever needs fixing without really fixing it in the end.

Being a Doubting Tom by nature, I did not believe the new document would be delivered and I told Warioba’s commission so, though many among them thought I was some disgruntled naysayer.

But it happened, in quick order, when Warioba’s team was unceremoniously disbanded, its offices closed, its accommodation cancelled, its vehicles called back and its website pulled down.

The whole thing looked like a shadowy group of miscreants had been found doing something illegal and thwarted in extremis, a far cry from a presidential commission going about being a presidential commission.

We never were told why the commission was sent packing, and that is it to this day. Kikwete forgot about the whole thing, Warioba does not want to talk about it and John Pombe Magufuli acts like it does not concern him.

But the quest will not die; people will continue agitating for a new constitution in a variety of fora, using differing tactics and tools. The direction of the evolution of human societies is always forward— sometimes in fits and starts, sometimes in sprints and dashes, sometimes in quakes and convulsions, sometimes in creeps and crawls.

The movement is always forward, and if it is forced into reverse, it is a counterintuitive reaction which will soon be corrected, often violently.

So, the wise man or woman in charge is called upon to listen, and listen hard; listen to the murmured words and words unspoken; listen to the whispering wind and the grass growing under their feet.

We are past that stage of listening because there is already a deafening roar from the populace suggesting “the falcon cannot hear the falconer.”

I doubt there is anyone in Tanzania’s political habitat — apart from die-hard CCM adherents — who will say that they trust the electoral commission as constituted today will discharge its duties independently and without interference from the Executive. This is not idle conjecture.

President Magufuli himself, who has a strange way of being transparent, is on record saying, “I cannot be paying you a good salary, giving you a nice car and you go and announce the victory of an opposition candidate at the polls.”

Those subaltern officers listening to their boss saying this understand that these are direct instructions for them to ensure the ruling party wins by hook or by crook. Anyone in their position would understand it in the same way, except for that rare species of bureaucrat who still believes that ethical behaviour can be eaten.

So what did we observe this time round? The electoral commission, made up entirely of civil servants, declared up to a third of opposition party candidates at parliamentary and civic levels ineligible because they failed to fill out their nomination forms correctly, a failure afflicting only opposition candidates, because none of the disqualified candidates are from CCM!

This mysterious inability to do paperwork on the part of the opposition has caused observers to wonder how shameless the electoral officials are prepared to be in their determinations to not lose their jobs, and how much they are prepared to lean on the necks of the opposition candidates before the latter say “enough is enough” and kick out in desperation.

I understand there are exchanges between party officials and electoral commission agents, and that droplets of candidates have been put back again on the candidates’ list, but it is not sure when the whole exercise is supposed to end and the candidates allowed to campaign.

Watch this space.