Saturday, November 1, 2025 - President Samia Suluhu Hassan has been declared the winner of Tanzania's presidential election, securing another term in office amid days of unrest across the country.
According to the electoral commission, Samia won 98% of the
votes, nearly sweeping the 32 million ballots cast in Wednesday's election.
International observers have expressed concern over the lack
of transparency and widespread turmoil that has reportedly left hundreds people
dead and hundreds injured.
The nationwide internet shutdown is making it difficult to
verify the death toll. The government has sought to play down the scale of the
violence - and authorities have extended a curfew in a bid to quell the unrest.
"I hereby announce Samia Suluhu Hassan as the winner of
the presidential election under the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) party,"
Jacobs Mwambegele, the electoral chief, said while announcing the results on
Saturday morning.
In Tanzania's semi-autonomous archipelago of Zanzibar -
which elects its own government and leader - CCM's Hussein Mwinyi, who is the
incumbent president, won with nearly 80% of the vote.
The opposition in Zanzibar said there had been "massive
fraud", the AP news agency reported.
Protests continued on Friday, as demonstrators in the port
city of Dar es Salaam and other cities took to the streets, tearing down
Samia's posters and attacking police and polling stations despite warnings from
the army chief to end the unrest.
The demonstrations are mostly led by young protesters, who
have denounced the election as unfair.
They accuse the government of undermining democracy by
suppressing the main opposition leaders - one is in jail and another was
excluded on technical grounds.
A spokesperson from the opposition Chadema party on Friday
told AFP news agency that "around 700" people had been killed in
clashes with security forces, while a diplomatic source in Tanzania told the
BBC there was credible evidence that at least 500 people had died.
Foreign Minister Mahmoud Kombo Thabit has described the
violence as a "few isolated pockets of incidents here and there" and
said "security forces acted very swiftly and decisively to address the
situation".
There were two main opposition contenders - Tundu Lissu, who
is being held on treason charges, which he denies, and Luhaga Mpina of the
ACT-Wazalendo party - but he was excluded on legal technicalities.
Sixteen fringe parties, none of whom have historically had
significant public support, were allowed to run.
Samia's ruling party, CCM, has dominated the country's
politics and has never lost an election since independence.
Ahead of the election, rights groups condemned government
repression, with Amnesty International citing a "wave of terror"
involving enforced disappearances, torture, and extrajudicial killings of
opposition figures.
The government rejected the claims, and officials said the
election would be free and fair.
Samia came into office in 2021 as Tanzania's first female
president following the death of President John Magufuli.
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