A Tanzanian reaction to possible episcopal election fraud; and US / African comparison

Possible election fraud in bishop of Tanzanian Anglican Church - arrest warrant for Primate of ACT. Very likely election fraud for American Presiding Bishop - virtually no one notices. What does this say of western Anglican church governance?

From Tanzania, we have news of a possible election fraud.  The province of Tanzania has been rent over the ethical question of the permissibility of condom use in the prevention of HIV/AIDS.  It was largely thought that the installation of a new bishop - the Rev. Stanley Hotay - for the Diocese of Mount Kilimanjaro would effectively end the division on this matter.

Unfortunately, it has become more complicated than this.  Some laypeople of the diocese have alleged that the age of Rev. Stanley Hotay was falsified.  There was a court order issued which was aimed at blocking Hotay's being seated as Bishop of the diocese of Mount  Kilimanjaro, pending adjudication.  I could not find the exact wording of the court order, but evidently it has prompted quite some drama in Tanzania.  Archbishop Valentino Mokiwa went forward with the consecration of the Rev. Hotay, though the Rev. Hotay was not installed as Bishop of Mount Kilimanjaro.  A warrant was issued for the arrest of Archbishop Valentino Mokiwa.  It has not yet been executed, police in Arusha replying to a reporter that they have not yet received the warrant.

It does sound like the situation is remaining peaceful.

“I don’t protest the court order, but the public should understand that someone is missing the point here… we actually honoured the order not to install the new bishop. What we did was to consecrate him as a new bishop… as of now he does not belong to any diocese,” said Dr Chilongani [Anglican Church of Tanzania Secretary General]. - The Citizen, " Police yet to arrest Mokiwa despite order"

Notes from the ground make it sound as if there's a little drama to the story.  An Episcopal Priest, the Rev. Dr. Douglas Richnow, reports that the police had been tracking Archbishop Mokiwa via his cellphone, and that he was advised to dispose of the SIM card.  We shall see how this story unfolds.

See also George Conger's excellent reporting on the matter for The Church of England Newspaper, here and here.

It is interesting to compare the current situation in Tanzania to the situation of the very likely election fraud in the TEC 2006 election.  Here, we have the election of a diocesan bishop being investigated by the government, because of alleged misinformation about his age.  The situation escalates to the issuing a warrant of arrest for the head of the church.  In the United States, the election of the very head of the church is marred by misinformation regarding her career - the false information that she was, for six years, dean of a school of theology.  Far be it from the government having interest in the likely fraud - the church itself fails to investigate, even though it had spent $200,000 on a committee tasked with nominating and vetting candidates.

Jefferts-Schori and Corvallisgate: Electoral justice is also a “justice issue”

Last month I posted an article on the Jefferts-Schori election coverup.

It occurred to me since that though The Episcopal Church is focused on "justice issues" as few churches ever have been - to many Episcopalians, it probably hasn't yet registered that electoral justice is also a "justice issue."

Why this election matters - and why it may be a lot worse than the Watergate scandal decades ago.

In 1973, many Americans were confronted with unpleasant news.  The President of the country they dearly loved was being investigated.  To many, the subject of investigation must have seemed odd and far-fetched: the question was being asked whether the President knew if a group of five men had broken into a building used by the Democratic Party as its headquarters, and whether he had engaged in activity to cover up the incident of this break in.  Many probably ironically wondered why Congress wasn't investigating the burglaries of their own homes, given how endemic burglary had become to American urban life.  The theft of an automobile or cash under one's mattress can have real and dire implications for a family's well-being; but what was alleged as stolen here was merely a party's “secrets.” No children go unfed because of such melodramatic news in the ongoing scuffle between political parties plotting to outdo one other in painting a brighter picture of America and winning America's votes.

But to the more perceptive, something much greater was at stake than five men breaking, entering, and stealing: what was at stake was a seemingly abstract issue we call “electoral justice.”  It's about polities which hold to democratic process, and the diligence they must maintain in preserving the fairness and honesty of elections.  It's about the consciousness that even when we elect a great man with great ideas, passion for justice, and loving charisma, who may very likely improve the lives of everyone – that if we do so  by means of a dishonest election, we are also undermining our very democratic sensibilities, and the principles which unite us as a people who live and work together.  And this seemingly abstract issue has very real consequences when we permit electoral injustice to occur with uncritical eyes: we begin to lose hope in fairness and transparency of governance, and are likely to slide into a form of political cynicism in which tyrants flourish – a situation in which the people so ruled have little say in things.

Katharine Jefferts-Schori, the first female Primate of the Anglican Communion, is a woman thousands of Episcopalians and other Anglicans have grown to love and appreciate over the last five years.  On the basis of her performance amongst Episcopalians, I have no doubt that were a vote to be held tomorrow for the office, that she would win by a wide margin.  Unfortunately, however, her election as Presiding Bishop was marred by a significant anomaly – one which might have begun innocently enough.  What is clear is that the end result of the election is a situation in which it is likely that the Presiding Bishop was elected under false pretenses, and in which significant election fraud very likely took place.  It is also clear that Jefferts-Schori herself knew this to be the case.

More Katharine Jefferts-Schori cover-up: hiding evidence after Wiki-wacks

Update to this article: see bottom of page.
See also my follow-up editorial on this issue:
Jefferts-Schori and Corvallisgate: Electoral justice is also a “justice issue”

A few months ago, the online biography of Katharine Jefferts-Schori was edited by an Episcopal Church Center staff worker at her behest - noted here and here.  The staff worker removed in its entirety, without providing any reason for this removal, a paragraph about how the description of candidates for election for Presiding Bishop contained information about Jefferts-Schori which was false - namely, that she was "Pastoral Associate and Dean, Good Samaritan School of Theology, Corvallis, OR." It turned out that at that time, she was merely in charge of her parish's adult education program - and not a very large parish, at that.  This was revealed shortly after the election, before her installation as bishop.

Jefferts-Schori most certainly was aware of the election materials; we have no evidence that she warned the House of Bishops or General Convention of the falsity; and as evidence to the contrary, one of the General Convention delegates blogged about the discovery.  To date, there has been no public inquest regarding this rather astounding election anomaly.


To this day, perhaps the greatest story here is the lack of a story: that after so many years, we still haven't heard of an inquest,  despite the significant likelihood of election fraud in a church which prides itself so in its electoral process. The Episcopal News Service hasn't even bothered to issue a retraction of their original story about Jefferts-Schori, based on this same, false information, which was repeated in hundreds of news sources.

On the Wikipedia discussion page, it was pointed out that TEC Church Offices should have known about the ethics of Wikipedia editing, and that one musn't remove items without reason - since in 2007, Barbara Alton had been so persistent in removing items from Bishop Bennison's Wikipedia page, after having been warned, that her account had been deleted, and this was reported in an international news source (as well as various Anglican news outlets).  It was pointed out that an EpiscopalLife article on the site of EpiscopalChurch.org noted that Alton "never received an order from Jefferts Schori."  Though the article quotes the Church Times for this information, Episcopal Life is a branch of TEC's media department at Episcopal Church Center; so Episcopal Church Center was at the very least informed of this incident, as they themselves reported on it.  So Episcopal Church center should have known better than to simply edit without providing information as to why the information was false (which it seems, it wasn't).