Plans for a referendum on the outcome of the muafaka talks may jeopardize the progress and relative stability achieved so far.

Below is an article written by Felister Peter and Lucas Sige, originally published in The Guardian and reproduced by Ippmedia.com:

Only two days after the ruling CCM suspended endorsement of plans for a coalition government in Zanzibar, the Civic United Front (CUF) has said it would not engage in any more talks on the matter.

Should the opposition party stick to its guns, the drawn-out standoff between it and CCM over the state of politics in the Isles could deepen further.

The stalemate has been the main item on the agenda of `muafaka` (reconciliation) negotiations involving senior representatives of the two parties for some two years now.

The talks were concluded recently and recommendations deliberated on separately first by CUF in Zanzibar and CCM at Butiama in Mara Region at the weekend.

While the opposition appeared happy with the recommendations arising from the talks, mainly the one calling for a coalition government, the ruling party’s powerful National Executive Committee (NEC) decided that it was wiser for the final word to come from Zanzibaris themselves, preferably through a referendum.

At its two-day meeting at Butiama, the CCM-NEC resolved that the `muafaka` committee should meet again and conveniently fine-tune its recommendations before they could be floated to the people.

The CCM committee insisted that the recommendations could work only with the blessings of the people of Zanzibar and that the people had every right to be given the chance to decide on the kind of government they believed was in their best interests.

But CUF is not impressed and swore yesterday that there was no way they would cooperate with CCM in deciding to return to the negotiation table if the ruling party did not endorse the coalition government format recommended by the bipartisan ‘muafaka’ team.

CUF also question the modalities and logic of the referendum recommended by CCM.

“How can you conduct a referendum on the subject while shortcomings in the permanent voters` register and Zanzibar Electoral Commission (ZEC) have not been rectified?” queried CUF Secretary General Seif Shariff Hamad, as he addressed reporters in Dar es Salaam yesterday [1 April 2008].

He explained that his party had no problems with the referendum idea as such but added: “The recommendations agreed by both sides during the `muafaka` negotiations on the permanent voters` register and ZEC must be worked on first. The referendum proposal would have made sense if it were tabled at the ‘muafaka’ negotiation table.”

The CUF leader appealed for immediate intervention by the international community in the deadlocked CCM-CUF talks to rescue Zanzibar from plunging into political chaos similar to that experienced in many other African countries today.

“The political situation in Zanzibar is terrible. People have been eagerly and anxiously waiting for the conclusion of the `muafaka` talks in the belief that a permanent solution to the protracted standoff was around the corner,” he observed.

President Jakaya Kikwete last August [2007] urged CUF to be patient and continue with the ‘muafaka’ talks, promising that he would ensure that the political standoff in the Isles “becomes history”.

In January this year [2008] the President assured members of the diplomatic corps accredited to Tanzania that the Zanzibar reconciliation talks were at a crucial stage and would lead to a solution to the standoff before long.

Hamad pleaded with President Kikwete “to keep his 2005 election-time promise to Tanzanians on this crucial matter”.

Had the CCM-NEC the `muafaka` team`s recommendations, Zanzibar would have had a coalition government become operational almost immediately.

A CCM/CUF peace accord signed in October 2001 called for political reforms that would enable the striking of a power balance between the two major parties, the ones with the biggest say in the politics of Zanzibar.