DAR ES SALAAM, Sept. 3 (Xinhuanet) -- The ruling party in Tanzania has set forth its election agenda that attaches significance to development programs for the next five years instead of focusing on the discussion of its candidates.

    Benjamin Mkapa, president of Tanzania and national chairman of the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM or party of the revolutionary),cautioned that more attention should be paid to how to further develop the country and not to who to succeed him after his second five-year presidential term expires in October next year.

    "The opposition and the media want us to discuss about people and not the national development agenda for the next five years. We must refuse to play into such traps," said Mkapa while announcing in Dodoma the formation of a party committee to preparethe CCM manifesto and development program for 2005-2010.

    The development program will have to be adopted before the nomination of CCM candidates early next year and will form the basis by which candidates will be judged, according to Mkapa.

    Multi-party politics was introduced in Tanzania in 1992 while one-party rule ended in 1995 with the country's first general elections in which the CCM won 85 percent of the ballots. CCM wonagain in 2000 among a dozen political groups.

    Yet the Civic United Front (CUF), Tanzania's main opposition party, challenged the CCM triumph in 2000 with election irregularities as it claimed that mainlanders had been sent to Zanzibar to vote against CUF.

    Tanzania is a united republic by Tanganyika on the mainland andZanzibar on the archipelago in the Indian Ocean, where Muslims account for more than 90 percent of population.

    The country has decided therefore to carry out a permanent voters registration after it had conducted a needs assessment in November 2002 and after consultations with various government institutions, the Zanzibar Electoral Commission, the National Census Office, the Commonwealth Secretariat, UNDP, the 13 member states of the Southern African Development Community and Kenya.

    The voters registration on Zanzibar, however, was postponed dueto renovation works on the electoral commission's offices on the island. Enditem