TV Newsroom quotes Africa Center Director J. Peter Pham on Tanzanian ruling party CCM and its candidate, Works Minister John Magufuli:
Two independent polls had forecast a presidential and parliamentary victory for CCM, although experts expected the party’s parliamentary majority to dwindle after the opposition united behind a single candidate for the first time.
“There’s clear popular enthusiasm for something different than the same old, same old CCM again”, said J. Peter Pham, director of the Africa Center at the Atlantic Council, a think tank in Washington, D.C. “It’s hard to run an anti-corruption campaign when he was forced to resign in 2008 under the shadow of financial impropriety”. The two parties used the word “change” as their campaign tool.