The shape of the parliament in Tanzania and the numbers there hide an important conundrum. They are simply unrepresentative. Take the quoted 1995 general election for example.

The candidates for the ruling party CCM won 3,814,206 votes which was 59% of the total votes.

The candidates for the second placed NCCR-Mageuzi won 1,406,343 votes which was 22% of the total votes.

Now look at the distribution of seats:

CCM: 186 (80%)

NCCR-Mageuzi: 16 (6%)

You can see that, even though only 59% of the voters supported CCM candidates, they hauled in 80% of the seats. NCCR-Mageuzi got the support of almost 22% of the voters but there reward was a measly 6% of the seats.

The full picture is actually even worse. The largest opposition party to emerge from the election (by number of seats rather than popular vote) was CUF. However, take a look at their numbers:

CUF won 323,432 votes which is 5% of the total. However, this gave them 24 seats or 7% of the total. So, even though CUF won less than a third of the votes won by NCCR-Mageuzi, it ended up with more members of parliament.

This is not CUF’s fault. It is just a result of the deeply flawed electoral system put in place and the arbitrary construction of constituencies. It also lays bare the regional nature of some political parties, in this case, CUF.

Development and good governance in Tanzania

The United Nations categorises countries as belonging in the list of the least developed in the world according to strict criteria. In effect, to be classified as a least developed country, the country must exhibit the lowest indicators of socio-economic development and the lowest ratings in the Human Development Index. One of the indicators is per capita income which must be below 750 US dollars.

In 2009, a total of 49 countries fell in the category of Least Developed Countries (LDC). 33 of these countries are in Africa and Tanzania is one of them. Least developed countries tend to be characterised by one or more of these:

· Extreme poverty of a large section of the population

· Civil strife

· Deep seated political corruption and poor governance

Tanzania is socially stable and so far there has not been any threat of civil strife. Today, Zimbabwe is officially the least developed country in the world with a per capita of just $200. All three characteristics of an LDC are clearly evident in that once prosperous country.

In Tanzania today, shocking levels of extreme poverty are witnessed co-existing side by side with tiny islands of conspicuous consumption. The majority of Tanzanians especially in the rural areas have got significantly poorer in the last few years even as the country’s GDP has gone up.