Zanzibar held presidential and parliamentary elections over the weekend. As with many elections in Africa that we have covered here at Publius the aftermath has been a violent one with protestors clashing with state police forces. The opposition is claiming victory although, as is suspected, fraud is likely to be committed on a wide scale.

Results are starting to trickle in from semi-autonomous Zanzibar’s elections on Sunday. The islands’ main opposition group is alleging that serious irregularities have taken place, while the ruling party dismissed those allegations.

As the vote-counting was under way, the two key contenders in the elections, the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi, and the main opposition group the Civic United Front issued statements outlining their concerns.

CUF presidential candidate Seif Sharif Hamad told reporters that, based on his party’s experience of Sunday’s elections, he concludes that they were anything but free and fair.

“The electoral process has been marred with a number of shortcomings,” said Mr. Hamad. “First of all, a number of our party agents were not supplied with results sheets, and as such that may lead to the results to be cooked in some areas. Secondly, we have realized that about 80-thousand people could not vote, and some of them had voting cards. Their names were listed outside, but they were not in the register. Because of that, you find these people are denied their right Äto voteÅ.”

Other opposition complaints include: instances where the ruling party had brought in truckloads of youth nicknamed “janjaweed” and others to vote for the ruling party at some polling stations; the discovery of what the Civic United Front says were extra ballot boxes at locations that did not have polling stations; and police intimidation and brutality at several polling stations and within Stone Town.

Mr. Hamad called for the Zanzibar Electoral Commission to address the opposition concerns before issuing final results, and says his party plans to stage peaceful protests if members determine that the results do not reflect the will of Zanzibaris.

The ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi denies that Sunday’s polls were riddled with irregularities. CCM official Kidawa Saleh explains.

Zanzibar is semi-autonomous from the rest of Tanzania and has its own House of Representatives with 50 seats. According to this report, preliminary results show 15 seats on the main island going to the ruling Socialists, with 18 seats on the second island so far going to the opposition. This has not been the only contentious elections since multi-party democracy was restored to the country in the early ’90s, however.

There have always been clashes between the opposition and the ruling party. One might consider it somehow strange that the Socialists are still in power given how popular the opposition party is in Zanzibar. But then again, it isn’t really all that surprising given the credibility and legitimacy of most African governments. The results won’t be out for a while, but a winning result for the Socialists wouldn’t exactly make me blink, though I can imagine that after all this time, people are getting sick of the same thing and are going to continue to rise up against the government.