People with disability challenges Tanzania’s electoral system

People with disability have challenged the Tanzania’s electoral system as discriminatory against them, thus hindering their participation in political processes.

The National Chairperson of the Organisation of People with Disability (CHAWATA), Shida Salum revealed a number of factors hindering people with disability from effectively participating in political processes, when  she was presenting a paper on “Participation of people with disability in election” during the CSOs Annual Forum held in May 2010 in Zanzibar.

She said few people with disability were participating in voting and contesting for political posts due to the lack of civic education, infrastructural barriers and long distance to and from registration and polling centres as well as laws and the whole regulatory environment in Tanzania.

For instance, she said that the Elections Act No. 1 of 1985, as amended in 1990 and 1992 requires forms for contesting to be filled by candidates themselves, (in normal writings), thus discriminating the visually impaired who use Braille.

She said that provision of the law has been providing loophole for some people to appeal against visually impaired candidates who seek assistance in filling forms, thus disqualifying them from contesting.

Also, she said that the Electoral Commission of Tanzania does not provide aid and facilitation services like sign language translation for the deaf and Braille documents for the visually impaired during voters’ registration and voting, which hinders participation of those groups.

In addition, she mentioned stigma in the society whereby some people consider people with disability that they don’t need to vote or contest in political elections. 

As a result, Shida said, very few people with disability are elected in political posts and their turnout for voting has been quite limited.

According to her, some cases which reveal the situation include statistics from the local government elections of 2009 whereby only 99 people with disability contested and won, out of the population of 4.8 million people with disability as estimated by the National Bureau of Statistics in 2008/2009.

On the other hand, she said that there is no any person with disability who is a Member of Parliament representing a constituency, but two for special seats and one appointed by the President. 

Regarding voters’ registration, Shida said picked an example of Dar es Salaam, stating that in 2005 a total of 1,679,557 people registered in the Permanent Voters’ Register.  She said, 167,955 should be people with disability, by deriving from the UN formula of 10% people with disability in a given population.

However, information from the National Electoral Commission (NEC), there were only 3,598 people with disability who were registered, which is almost 2.4 percent only of the expected number.

Shida urged the government to review its laws to ensure that people with disability are provided with as equal chance to participate in political processes, particularly voting and contesting as other Tanzanians.

Also, she urged NEC and other stakeholders of the electoral system to provide people with disability friendly environment to participate in registration for voting, voting as well as contesting for political posts.

Among others, she requested NEC to ensure that it provides sign language translators at registration and polling stations so as to ensure that the deaf effectively participate in registration and voting.

Similarly, she requested for accessible registration and polling stations, supporting aids, printing of Braille documents, enlarged printouts to enable different groups of people with disability participate effectively in elections.