CUF cries foul as candidate for CCM captures Mbagala

Dar es Salaam. CCM candidate Mangungu Issa was yesterday declared the winner of Mbagala parliamentary seat after five days of delay in releasing the results.

According to the results, Mr Mangungo garnered 87,249 votes against CUF’s candidate Kondo Bungo who received 77,043 votes. The results were released in the absence of aspirants and their agents.

However, Mr Mangungo’s main rival, Mr Bungo, and other opposition parties have rejected them, saying they were doctored to favour the CCM candidate. Temeke Municipal director Photidas Kagimbo who is the returning officer for the constituency was not available for comment but one of the officials admitted that their office was aware of the results.

“It is true that those results were displayed by Temeke Municipality around 4am and by then there was no one around,” the official said on condition of anonymity.

The CUF candidate alleged that the returning officer pinned the results against an agreement on Wednesday with aspirants that they will only be released after addressing some issues.

“On Wednesday, we proposed to the director of Temeke Municipality three options, re-election in all wards, re-election in wards in which irregularities were observed or re-tallying,” said Mr Bungo

He added: “The director promised to follow the proposals and that he would give us feedback by yesterday (today) at 8am after he consulted the National Electoral Commission (NEC), but surprisingly he acted against the agreement.”Mr Bungo told journalists yesterday that he was consulting his party leaders and lawyers on the way forward. NCCR-Mageuzi aspirant Kasim Mapande said the returning officer failed to live up to the agreement with other aspirants to address the shortcomings in the election before announcing the results.

“Results from most polling stations showed that theCUF’s candidate was leading...I’m sad that the director has released fake results before addressing our concerns,” said Mr Mapande.