The politics of continuity and collusion in Zanzibar: political reconciliation and the establishment of the Government of National Unity

Abstract

The popularity of unity governments to settle both internal political divisions and outright conflict has grown in the last 20 years. However, more often than not unity governments fail to mitigate the political dynamics baked into the political economies and suffer from being insufficiently anchored in local society. The Government of National Unity (GNU) in Zanzibar, formed in 2010 as the culmination of the ‘maridhiano’ political reconciliation process and following numerous attempts at reconciliation led to initial successes, is a case in point. Zanzibar's GNU turned out to be ‘position’ rather than ‘power’ sharing, constitutionalised through a hybrid format of the politics of continuity and collusion. As such the position sharing system broke down when voters in the 2015 election sought neither continuity nor collusion, but transformational change of governance. This was in turn blocked by veto actors in favour of continuity, resulting in the collapse and discontinuation of the GNU in Zanzibar.

Power-sharing and electoral conflict management in Zanzibar: Focusing on electoral institutions

“…However, what comes to the head of people, including scholars, is the ability of the power-sharing electoral institutions to solve the electoral problems on the Island. Such an argument comes as a reflection of the failure of the previous institutions to utterly provide mutual trust among the contending parties and citizens at large (Roop et al, 2018). Again, another question was about Zanzibar's political culture and the sharing of government political posts.…”

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“…This in turn led to the end of the Maridhiano spirit after a five-year experiment. The rift between CCM and CUF widened, leading to increasingly harsh political rhetoric against each other and withering the spirit of co-operation and partnership within the GNU as well as in the populace at large (Roop, Tronvoll & Minde 2018). The controversial re-election in March 2016 proved to be the end of the Mariadhiano spirit and the end of the first-phase GNU.…”

“…The previous general election in 2010 saw the perennial incumbent party Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM) controversially win by a narrow margin over the opposition party Civic United Front (CUF). Pursuant to the power-sharing agreement, it established itself as the senior and dominating partner in the GNU (Roop, Tronvoll & Minde 2018). The 2015 election would hence be a litmus test of the robustness and durability of the reconciliation agreement and the consolidation of political stability on the islands under a GNU framework.…”

When National Unity Governments are neither National, United, nor Governments: The Case of Tunisia

“…Power-sharing, however, has been criticized by other scholars for its loss of democratic accountability and the lack of a strong opposition (Jung and Shapiro 1995;Maphai 1996;Spears 2000;Rothchild and Roeder 2005;Kriger 2012; Graham, Miller, and Strøm 2017). NUGS may also hinder democratic consolidation by facilitating a "politics of collusion" (Cheeseman and Tendi 2010;Roop 2018), where elites in power capture resources while action on necessary but potentially polarizing decisions is delayed.…”