Harare — The battle continued Monday at polling stations in Zimbabwe, between President Robert Mugabe's government and Morgan Tsvangirai's opposition, to try to win as many of the last remaining votes as possible in an unscheduled third day of voting.
A last-minute ruling by the High Court on Sunday extended voting into Monday all over the country to ensure that would-be voters would get an opportunity to cast their ballot in the presidential election.
Mugabe's government partly complied by opening polling stations on Monday morning in the capital, Harare, and nearby Chitungwiza.
But the authorities refused to keep polling stations open nationwide, in accordance with the court order, on the grounds that it would be an unnecessary and logistical nightmare.
Partial compliance with the court order came after earlier statements on Sunday evening that the government intended to appeal against the High Court judgment. The overnight change of mind contributed to confusion about whether or not Monday would be a polling day or a national day off.
By 10am on Monday, there were reports suggesting that some of the Harare polling stations that had reopened at 7a.m., Monday morning, had once again closed their doors, after contradictory orders and announcements from government officials.
Harare and other urban areas are traditionally opposition strongholds and, on Sunday, winding queues continued to build up in the capital and in other towns as tens of thousands of voters waited in vain to cast their ballot.
But, after the court ruling on Sunday evening, and despite the huge queues at polling stations in Harare and surrounds, police closed those centres that had stayed open late, saying that voters should return on Monday.
Norwegian election observer, Kare Vollan, who visited the opposition bastion, Warren Park township, in western Harare late on Sunday evening - where a line of about a thousand people was still waiting to vote - told Reuters news agency: "The authorities are closing all the polling stations in Harare, because of the court decision. We have reports of the same closures all over town."
The court's decision to extend voting came in response to a petition filed by Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in which the party accused the Zanu-PF government of using delaying tactics to disenfranchise opposition voters.
In a statement issued late on Sunday, the MDC charged Mugabe's government with systematically disenfranchising opposition supporters, denying them the right to vote and working to undermine the High Court decision. On Saturday, Tsvangirai had accused Mugabe of radically reducing the number of polling stations in urban centres to prevent the full number of opposition loyalists from casting their ballots.
"This evening, the government of Zimbabwe took a deliberate decision to deny hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans the right to vote by closing polling stations, despite its earlier undertaking that polling stations would remain open for as long as there were people still queuing to vote," said the MDC.
The statement concluded that, at the time the High Court was making the order, police were busy closing polling stations in Harare and Chitungwiza and "beating up people queuing to vote and ordering them to go home because polling was over."
The picture in rural Zimbabwe, where 3.4 million of Zimbabwe's eligible 5.6 million voters live, was quite different. The opposition, and international election observers, concluded that the number of polling stations available to voters, in what are traditionally Mugabe's strongest constituencies, had been dramatically increased since the parliamentary poll in 2000.
The long, snaking queues, that characterized polling in Harare and urban centres over the weekend, were noticeably absent in the countryside. Television images from rural Zimbabwe on Sunday showed empty polling stations and officials twiddling their thumbs, with nothing to do and no voters to register.
The unanswered question is whether all the Zimbabweans who have so far not been able to vote would have been able to, by the end of the day. Only half the registered voters countrywide had cast their ballot by Sunday night.
Meanwhile, the newspapers have lined up and declared their views.
The banner headline of the pro-government daily, The Herald, read: "Mugabe leads in the polls. Massive turnout in traditional Zanu-PF stronghold. MDC headed for defeat in the presidential election as figures released so far show a massive turnout in rural areas, which are traditionally a Zanu-PF stronghold."
The lead story in The Daily News, which favours Tsvangirai's opposition party, challenged the information in The Herald, saying "MDC warns of poll fraud". The paper quotes the MDC spokesperson, Learnmore Jongwe, warning that the government was manipulating figures of registered voters in both urban and rural areas to try to steal the election.
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Other reports in the The Daily News spoke of intimidation of MDC voters by Zanu-PF activists during two days of polling at the weekend.
This followed reports of opposition voters and MDC election officials being harassed by Zanu-PF loyalists in towns and rural areas of the country. The independent Zimbabwe Human Rights' Forum on Sunday detailed attacks on opposition supporters and on MDC election agents and monitors who are officially mandated to oversee rural voting.
The Forum reported that at least 58 people, including 43 black Zimbabweans, 11 white farmers, two Americans and two Britons, had been detained for a number of alleged offences.
Opinion polls and independent political analysts predict a close finish, with votes from the cities and towns - where voting queues were longest - more likely to favour Tsvangirai, while results from the countryside most likely to support Mugabe. The Zimbabwean president has maintained a grip on power for 22 years, since armed movements won independence from Britain in 1980, in the then Rhodesia, after a gruelling civil war in which tens of thousands of people were killed.
