Election Officials block bid to extend the Voting

Original Post Date: 2002-03-11  Posted By: Jan

From the News Archives of: WWW.AfricanCrisis.Org
Date & Time Posted: 3/11/2002 6:02:46 PM
Election Officials block bid to extend the Voting

Source: www.News24.co.za

Harare – Zimbabwe’s chaotic presidential elections dissolved into confusion on Monday morning as the government said voting would be extended an extra day, but most polling officers refused to allow people to vote. The opposition Movement for Democratic Change, whose candidate Morgan Tsvangirai is challenging President Robert Mugabe’s 22-year grip on power, said police had also arrested two of its senior officials.

Welshman Ncube, the party’s secretary-general and third ranking official, was arrested in the southwestern town of Plumtree, while his deputy Gift Chimanikire was detained in Harare, said David Coltart an opposition legislator. Police gave no reasons for the arrests, but Ncube has been charged with treason in a previous case.

After being chased away from polling stations by police on Sunday night, many voters returned to vote Monday after the High Court ordered the government to extend voting countrywide for a third day after thousands of people remained on lines in Harare when the polls were supposed to close. Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa said on state television on Monday morning the government would comply with the court order under duress and would only extend voting in Harare and a nearby township, both opposition strongholds, because many polling stations in the rest of the country had already been dismantled.

However, by 08:30 on Monday, 90 minutes after polls were to have reopened, polling observers in Harare said they remained closed. “People have come as early as 04:00. They wanted to vote, but nothing is happening on the ground,” said Derek Madharani, an opposition poll observer. “I don’t know what we can do now. We have exhausted all the channels to plea with this government to be fair to the people, to give them a chance to vote, but our pleas are falling on deaf ears,” he said. Another poll observer said a few polling stations were processing voters.

Despite pre-election violence and intimidation that opposition officials blame on Mugabe loyalists, voters headed out in record numbers to cast their ballots during the weekend vote – especially in urban areas like Harare. The opposition and many observers have accused the government of trying to rig the elections by preventing urban residents ? who mostly support the opposition – from voting.

Alex Chinhanga, 25, a voter who was chased away from a polling station in the poor Glen View suburb on Sunday night, said he was concerned about missing work to vote. “We don’t know what will happen when we go back to work with our bosses. Are they going to say, ‘What happened?’ or will they just keep quiet?” he asked.

In Zimbabwe’s second city of Bulawayo and its surrounds, observers said most people appeared to have cast their ballot and there appeared to be no need for an extra day of voting. Also on Monday, the government announced turnout figures that showed massive voting in Mugabe strongholds with far fewer voters casting ballots in opposition areas.

Mashonaland Central, which normally votes strongly for the ruling party, had a 68% turnout. The opposition stronghold of Harare had a 47% turnout so far, and the city of Bulawayo a 46% turnout, the government said. Despite the long lines in Harare, Information Minister Jonathan Moyo was quoted in the independent Daily News on Monday as saying that reports of high turnout for Harare were “really pictures painted by people with creative imaginations”. Overall, 2.7 million of the nation’s 5.6 million registered voters, or 48%, went to the polls by Sunday, the government said.

The Zimbabwe Educational Trust, an independent research group, said last week that the voters’ rolls were in such disarray that any turnout higher than 2.6 million could be rigged. Also on Monday, the state-run Herald newspaper said white people, opposition officials and an American were deployed to some polling stations in a suspicious manner that led authorities to believe there was a plot to disrupt the elections to give the international community a chance to declare them unfair. The Herald also accused the American and British governments of “setting up the stage for a major military offensive”.

Tsvangirai, Mugabe’s most competitive challenger since independence in 1980, is promising to revive the economy and end corruption. Mugabe, however, has painted Tsvangirai as a servant to white interests and Western powers who want to see the country fail. Two weeks ago, Tsvangirai was charged with treason in connection with an alleged plot to assassinate Mugabe, an allegation he has denied. Mugabe has promised public works initiatives if he is re-elected and has pledged to continue his controversial program of seizing white-owned farms and giving them to landless blacks. Whites make up less than 1% of the country’s population but own about a third of the nation’s commercial farmland.

In the weeks before the vote, pro-Mugabe militants attacked opposition supporters, while police broke up several opposition rallies and arrested dozens of Tsvangirai supporters. Ruling party militants took over two polling stations, stole voting materials from a third, and at another station, ballots arrived already marked in favour of Mugabe, observers and opposition supporters said Saturday. In a statement on Sunday night, opposition officials said attacks on polling monitors and supporters continued on Sunday throughout the country. “The attacks appear to be systematically implemented and are clearly aimed at preventing (opposition) officials from observing the voting process in certain areas,” it said.

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