Silence as Complicity: How the EAC Quietly Watched Tanzania’s 2025 Election Unravel

By Adonis Byemelwa

Tanzania’s October 2025 general election was meant to be a moment of democratic renewal, a test of political maturity for one of East Africa’s most stable nations. Instead, it unfolded as a story of mistrust, state overreach, and regional disquiet.

The East African Community’s Election Observation Mission, deployed to monitor the process, found itself balancing diplomacy against truth. Its preliminary report, polite and cautious, seemed to underplay the scale of what had happened.

In contrast, the African Union, global media, and civil society offered a far more unsettling picture: an election shadowed by fraud, intimidation, and bloodshed, a reminder that regional institutions still struggle to confront their own.

When EAC observers arrived weeks before the vote, their mandate was clear: evaluate the credibility of the process and uphold the region’s principles of democracy and rule of law. Yet their post-election statement sounded strangely detached. It praised the electoral commission’s preparations, noted isolated “peaceful” polling stations, and thanked the government for its hospitality.

 There was no mention of opposition exclusion, no acknowledgment of widespread harassment, and not a word about the internet blackout that muzzled communication on election day. The promise of a “more detailed report” rang hollow to many Tanzanians, who heard it as diplomatic code for silence in the face of wrongdoing.

Other observers were less restrained. The African Union mission declared flatly that the election “did not comply with AU principles and international standards.” It reported ballot stuffing, multiple voting, and the expulsion of some observers during counting.

President Samia Suluhu Hassan’s landslide, an eyebrow-raising 98 percent, was dismissed by opponents as fiction. Protests broke out in Dar es Salaam, Mwanza, and Arusha. Human rights groups spoke of hundreds of deaths. The government denied those numbers, but even admitting casualties shattered the illusion of calm.

The EAC’s muted tone did not go unnoticed. Analysts across the region read it as political caution masquerading as neutrality. “Unfortunately, a regional body that should champion democracy has chosen diplomatic convenience over truth,” said Kenyan lawyer and scholar PLO Lumumba. He called the vote “a coronation disguised as an election.”

 Lumumba’s rebuke captured a broader frustration among East African intellectuals who see a pattern of incumbents entrenching themselves while institutions meant to oversee them shrink from confrontation.

Inside Tanzania, the anger was sharper. Veteran columnist Jenerali Ulimwengu accused regional observers of “watching democracy bleed and applauding the efficiency of the knives.”

 He lamented the hypocrisy of a society that “cajoles students not to cheat in exams, then involves them in voting when they’re underage and expects them to maintain integrity in the end.”

 His words, half sardonic, half furious, cut to the moral decay he believes underlies the country’s politics, a system where rules exist only for the powerless. For Ulimwengu, the EAC’s polished niceties were not diplomacy but complicity.

Constitutional law scholar Issa Shivji placed the blame on structure, not just circumstance. Tanzania’s problem, he argued, is institutional: “When the electoral commission is appointed by the same executive it must supervise, when laws criminalize dissent and limit participation, the issue is not whether elections are fair, it’s whether they can ever be.”

 His critique exposes the gap between the EAC’s technical observations and the deeper constitutional rot that makes genuine competition impossible. To assess such an election without confronting its structural flaws, he suggested, is to observe a play and pretend it's real politics.

Civil society groups painted a bleaker scene still. Opposition supporters were arrested, journalists detained, and rallies crushed with tear gas. The Tanganyika Law Society (TLS), the country’s bar association, reported dozens of lawyers threatened for defending protesters.

TLS president Boniface Mwabukusi estimated more than a thousand deaths, citing accounts from across the regions, a claim the government dismissed but never convincingly disproved. With hospitals overwhelmed and information suppressed, truth became a casualty of fear.

Amid such chaos, the EAC’s restraint felt almost surreal. In seeking balance, the mission appeared to trade credibility for access. Observers often operate under tight political constraints, dependent on host governments for logistics and protection.

 Yet neutrality, when stretched too far, begins to look like endorsement. For Tanzanians who risked their lives to vote or protest, the EAC’s silence was a betrayal. For the wider region, it reinforced a cynical belief that East African institutions exist to protect rulers, not citizens.

Global reaction followed a familiar script. Western capitals expressed “concern” but avoided open condemnation, wary of destabilizing an ally vital to counterterrorism and trade.

The United Nations called for “dialogue and restraint.” Independent journalists were more forthright, describing the vote as “a masterclass in controlled democracy, an election designed to validate power, not transfer it.”

The AU’s scathing assessment placed pressure on the EAC to clarify its position. None came. Insiders at the Arusha headquarters quietly admitted that the mission’s tone was dictated by politics.

Tanzania, a founding EAC member and regional heavyweight, could not be embarrassed without risking unity. Yet that very logic exposes the heart of the problem: a regional body unwilling to enforce the democratic values it proclaims. If the EAC cannot call out electoral abuses among its own, what moral authority can it claim elsewhere?

For many Tanzanians, this election carried a grim sense of déjà vu. In 2020, similar allegations of fraud and suppression were met with indifference. When Samia Suluhu Hassan took office after John Magufuli’s death, she was hailed as a reformer.

 She reopened media outlets, met opposition leaders, and promised dialogue. Hope flickered that Tanzania was turning a page. The 2025 election extinguished that hope. The 98 percent victory margin did not symbolize unity; it screamed control.

Political scientists now place Tanzania within a broader regional slide. Across East Africa, incumbents have mastered the art of electoral theatre, the ritual of voting without the substance of choice.

Uganda perfected it, Rwanda institutionalized it, and now Tanzania has joined the chorus. The EAC’s muted language reflects this shared discomfort: criticizing one member might invite scrutiny of others. It’s safer to celebrate “peaceful elections” than to name authoritarianism for what it is.

Beyond the politics lies the human cost. Behind each statistic is a story: families searching morgues for missing sons, mothers waiting outside police stations for news, journalists silenced for trying to tell the truth.

For many citizens, the ballot box no longer represents hope but ritualized futility. When the vote becomes a performance and results are predetermined, democracy dies quietly, not with explosions but with applause for “stability.”

The EAC’s final report, when it eventually appears, will face a reckoning: double down on diplomacy or confront the truth. Credibility demands honesty. The region’s citizens are watching, and so is the world. Tanzania, once praised for unity and moderation, now risks joining the list of states where elections merely confirm power.

In the end, this is bigger than Tanzania. It’s about the soul of East African democracy, whether regional institutions can protect people instead of regimes. Lumumba captured it best: “Africa’s tragedy is not the absence of elections, but the presence of elections without democracy.”

Tanzania’s 2025 vote stands as a case study in that tragedy, the spectacle of ballots without choice, observers without courage, and a people left wondering if anyone is still listening. Democracy, after all, doesn’t die in darkness alone. Sometimes it dies under the polite applause of those who were sent to watch over it.