Safe from the fact that the main opposition party will not be participating in the country’s 2025 General Elections, the ruling party in Tanzania has been quite confident.
From the recent primaries, it is clear that the party bigwigs were experimental in their latest selections of candidates. Not to mention that it took 24 hours of keeping people waiting for the final list.
The Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) through its primaries, has finally chucked out more than 30 former members of parliament, including the popular cadres, who had expressed interest to vie for their seats at the National Assembly again.
There will be new faces in the national assembly once the parliament opens shop in November 2025.
Whether they will bring anything new to the table, that another issue.
For observers though, it seems like the 2030 presidential race in Tanzania’s ruling CCM party has just begun, with the 2025 polls being used as springboard for catapulting them into the next five years.
This comes as the 2025 parliamentary primary in CCM has effectively become the battleground for something which looks like future dreams, possibly the 2030 presidential race.
President Samia Suluhu Hassan is expected to be declared the winner of the 2025 polls in October.
It will be her second and final term in office in the October 29 general election.
She entered the state house after the death of her predecessor, John Pombe Magufuli in March 2021.
Tanzania’s constitution rules that Samia must step down at the end of her presidency in 2030.
But even before she has started her final term in office, a race to succeed Samia as president five years from now has already quietly begun in the ruling party.
Presidential politics in CCM are brutal, and it’s getting fast and furious.
The outgoing Arusha Member of Parliament, Mrisho Gambo has been forced out of the race, having been excluded from the shortlist.
His nemesis, the former Regional Commissioner for Arusha, Paul Makonda has made it in the final list of selected contenders and is being touted to be actually the party’s real frontman.
The Northern City is one of the most coveted political constituencies in the country.
On the other hand, the former foreign minister January Makamba became the latest high-profile ruling party politician to be axed from his parliamentary seat.
CCM announced that Makamba has been axed from a shortlist of candidates who will take part in the primary for the Bumbuli parliamentary constituency.
Makamba has served as Bumbuli MP for the past 15 years and was seeking another five-year term.
However, a shortlist of 6 names for the Bumbuli parliamentary primary approved by the CCM central committee under the chairmanship of President Samia unexpectedly axed Makamba.
Samia left Makamba out of her cabinet in a July 2024 reshuffle, but suggested in February this year that Makamba was back in the fold after giving him a public embrace in his Bumbuli constituency.
Prior to being dropped from cabinet, Makamba was seen as one of Samia’s closest allies in government and CCM.
Earlier this month, Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa was forced to retire from politics, just days after announcing he would run for re-election as Member of Parliament.
Retired President Jakaya Kikwete has managed to maintain his wife, Salma and son, Ridhiwan in the National Assembly.
Whoever gets nominated to run for any of the parliamentary seats on the CCM card, is bound to win, because the strongest opposition party, CHADEMA (Chama Cha Demokrasia na Maendeleo) has boycotted the 2025 polls.
CHADEMA stated clearly that, “without reforms in the electoral process, the polls are bound to be a sham, like many others previously!”
It therefore leaves CCM runners dominating the tracks. Which means the focus may not be so much on the 2025 elections but the next ‘big thing,’ in 2030.
Ruling party insiders are predicting that more political careers could be prematurely ended as factional battles intensify within the ruling party ahead of 2030.