UN to assist Tanzania's general elections in 2010

The United Nations has offered to assist next year's general elections in Tanzania, the local daily the African reported on Tuesday.

The support of 23 million U.S. dollars from the UN is a complementary initiative to the on-going national efforts to plan and implement elections, the report quoted the statement released on Monday from the UN offices in Dar es Salaam as saying.

The Elections Support Project 2010 is expected to start to assist the National Electoral Commission (NEC) and the Zanzibar Electoral Commission (ZEC) and will continue until after the elections, expected in October 2010, according to the statement after the signing ceremony of the three parties of the UN, the NEC and the ZEC.

At the signing ceremony, UN Resident Coordinator Oscar Fernandez-Taranco made the introduction to the project, which will help the Commissions plan for and manage some technical needs of the elections process including voter registration, voter education, coordinating election observers and communications, the statement said.

Fernandez-Taranco quoted the statement as saying that the main goal is to further strengthen national capacities for the implementation of free, fair and credible elections with a focus on increasing the capacity of the NEC and ZEC as well as further engaging national stakeholders such as political parties, the media and other civil society actors.

The project will be managed directly by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Funding for the projects is provided by the UNDP and other donor partners including Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Britain and the European Commission.

In Tanzania, general elections are organized in every five years whereby the President, the Members of Parliament and Councilors for local authorities are elected to public offices through a competitive electoral process that involve multi-party contests by the electorates.