CHADEMA WON DEPUTY MAYOR POSITION OF ARUSHA CITY

Tanzania’s leading opposition party, CHADEMA at long last has won the   Arusha deputy mayoral seat through an election held at the City Hall on yesterday.The controversial election was finally staged after four-years of dilly dallying with the issue, following a drawn out tug of war between CHADEMA and the ruling party CCM, holding mot of the ward councillors between them.Daraja-Mbili Ward councillor Prosper Msoffe was voted deputy mayor to fill the vacant seat after CHADEMA expelled from the party former Kimandolu councillor  Estomih Mallah.He was supposed to contest the position with Sokoni One Ward councillor  Michael Kivuyo of the Tanzania Labour Party (TLP), then acting deputy mayor, but TLP did not send in a candidate and neither did CCM. This left the CHADEMA candidate to sail unopposed, picking up 25 ballots for his candidacy out of 28 ballots cast.Mallah together with five other former CHADEMA councillors were thrown out of the party after they entered into an unofficial pact with CCM to calm the political situation in the city, whereupon the party expelled the five councillors involved.Msoffe has less than a year in office after being elected Daraja-Mbili ward councillor and now has to use his limited experience to handle often bitter contentions in the city council, and advise the mayor accordingly. Observers see the post as ceremonial, but there is much at stake even then.As if in evidence of what is at stake, hundreds of CHADEMA supporters thronged the city hall shouting and jostling their way, threatening to unleash more bedlam should any party stand in the way for the deputy mayor’s seat.Mallah will be working alongside Gaudence Lyimo, the substantive mayor and Olorien Ward councillor, who still smarts from a violent campaign by CHADEM A concerning his election in December 2010.