(Corrects location of swearing-in ceremony, paragraph 4)
(Reuters) -Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu Hassan vowed on Monday to move on from deadly protests set off by last week’s disputed election as she was sworn into office for her first elected term.
Opponents say the vote was rigged and that hundreds died, but the government has dismissed that toll as exaggerated.
Hassan, who came to power in 2021 following the death of her predecessor, was declared the winner of last Wednesday’s election with nearly 98% of the vote. Her two leading challengers had been disqualified from the race.
The 65-year-old, one of only two female heads of state in Africa, took the oath of office at a ceremony at a military parade ground within the State House in the capital Dodoma.
“Life must continue,” she told dignitaries including the presidents of Somalia, Burundi, Mozambique and Zambia.
Hassan condemned the protests as violent and destructive.
“Our responsibility is to build our today to be better than our yesterday. I beg that we continue protecting our values of unity and collaboration,” she said.
OBSERVERS SAY VOTERS ‘COULD NOT EXPRESS DEMOCRATIC WILL’
The U.N. human rights office said credible reports indicated at least 10 people had died in the protests that erupted during last Wednesday’s voting.
The government dismissed the opposition’s toll as “hugely exaggerated” and defended the security response as reasonable and necessary. Hassan acknowledged lives had been lost in the violence, without saying how many.
Reuters could not independently verify casualty figures.
The biggest opposition party CHADEMA, which was excluded from the election for refusing to sign a code of conduct and whose leader was arrested on treason charges in April, said the results were fabricated.
Election observers from southern African regional body SADC, of which Tanzania is a member, said that in most areas, “voters could not express their democratic will”, citing restrictions on the opposition and the appearance of ballot box stuffing at some polling stations.
The government has said the electoral process was fair and transparent.
The electoral commission said Hassan won with 31.9 million votes from 37.7 million registered voters, vastly more than the 12.5 million her predecessor, John Magufuli, received in 2020.
INTERNET STILL DOWN, CIVIL SERVANTS WORK FROM HOME
Internet access, which the government restricted on election day, remained disrupted on Monday.
Protests appear to have waned in recent days but there were still heavy military and police deployments in the commercial capital Dar es Salaam on Monday and civil servants were again told to work from home, residents told Reuters.
The African Union congratulated Hassan on her election win over the weekend but urged her government to uphold “fundamental rights and freedoms”.
Hassan won praise after taking office in 2021 from Magufuli for easing government repression but has more recently faced criticism from opposition parties and activists after a series of arrests and alleged abductions of opponents.
Last year, she said she had ordered an investigation into reports of abductions. No official findings have been released.
(Writing by Elias Biryabarema; Editing by Aaron Ross and Andrew Cawthorne)
