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Zimbabwe: Country Goes to the Polls Amid Fears of Rigging By Mugabe
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The Nation (Nairobi)
29 March 2008
Posted to the web 28 March 2008
Kitsepile Nyathi
Harare
Zimbabweans go to the polls on Saturday in what has been described as the country's most important election, amid mounting worries within the opposition that veteran President Robert Mugabe has already stolen the vote.
There was a mixture of suspense and hope among voters and political players on the eve of the combined presidential, parliamentary, senatorial and municipal elections, in which 5.9 million voters hope to deliver a verdict that will stop the world's fastest economic decline.
Mugabe, in power since independence from Britain in 1980, is facing the most serious test to his rule from former ally, Dr Simba Makoni, and opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai in the race for the presidency.
The rest of the polls will be a contest between candidates from Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF, which holds sway in rural areas, and the divided MDC that is largely seen as an urban phenomenon.
Electoral Commission
On Friday, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC), under fire from the opposition for alleged bias in favour of Zanu-PF, said polling stations would open at 7am and ballot boxes sealed at 6.30p.m.
It said counting of ballots would begin immediately at the ward-based polling stations, and the announcement of results is likely to start tomorrow evening.
The results of the presidential vote will be announced from a national collating centre instead of constituencies, an arrangement the opposition says is meant to facilitate rigging of the polls.
With a sham electoral register, said to include 50,000 dead people and thousands of ghost voters and threats of an army coup if Mugabe loses the polls, Saturday's elections have hogged the limelight for all the wrong reasons.
On Friday, Mugabe's challengers said they had unearthed fresh evidence that the veteran leader had put in place an elaborate plan to gain an absolute majority in the high-stakes election.
"There is a well-thought out and premeditated plan to steal the election from us," Dr Makoni told journalists in Harare. "The credibility of the electoral process is in doubt."
Mugabe must win more than 50 per cent of the valid votes cast to avoid a potentially embarrassing run-off.
Independent surveys
Independent surveys have tipped Tsvangirai to beat Mugabe and Makoni. However, according to a survey released by an academic linked to Zimbabwe's feared spy agency on Thursday, Mugabe will win 57 per cent of the vote in the presidential election.
The survey by Dr Joseph Kurebwa of the University of Zimbabwe says Zanu-PF will clinch a total of 41 Senate seats and 137 Parliamentary seats.
It says Tsvangirai will take between 26 and 27 per cent of the presidential vote, with Makoni, who is standing as an independent, managing around 13 per cent.
The survey predicts that the ruling party will have a strong showing in its traditional strongholds in the countryside, while Makoni and Tsvangirai will share the urban votes.
"Dr Makoni is pulling his numbers from Harare and Bulawayo, areas in which the MDC has concentrated its campaign resources," Kurebwa told the state-run Herald newspaper.
"Zanu-PF appears to have concentrated its resources in rural areas and managed to secure them.
"On the other hand, neither Makoni nor Tsvangirai has made any real attempts to market themselves there.
So you have a situation where the areas the opposition is targeting being free for all while Zanu PF is left alone to take the rural vote."
However, the privately-owned Zimbabwe Independent newspaper claimed that it had uncovered evidence linking Kurebwa's survey to a sophisticated plan by the country's security forces to rig the elections in favour of Mugabe.
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It said the security forces, led by Central Intelligence Organisation operatives tasked to ensure Mugabe "wins power, stays in power and keeps power", will heavily influence the already flawed electoral process to secure a predetermined result.
The outcome
Kurebwa's survey was meant to prepare Zimbabweans for the outcome, the paper said.
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