WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2002-03-14 Posted By: Jan
From the News Archives of: WWW.AfricanCrisis.Org
Date & Time Posted: 3/14/2002 1:46:23 AM
Zimbabwe: The Mystery of the Ballot Boxes
Source:Daily Telegraph (UK)
published: Tue 12-Mar-2002
Every stage of this process is filled with openings for trickery and independent scrutiny is minimal
If the Zimbabwe turnout figures published by the government yesterday are to be believed, more people have voted in President Mugabe’s stronghold of Mashonaland East province than anywhere else. The statistics are curious for a number of reasons. The province’s transport links are inferior to those in the cities and literacy rates are much lower. So it might be expected that urban areas would attract greater numbers of voters to the polls. Yet Mashonaland East achieved a turnout of 57 per cent, compared to a pitiful 28 per cent in Harare. The figures cover the first day and a half of the two-day vote. Moreover, Mashonaland East’s turnout exceeded that of every other province and was well above the national average of 43 per cent. It also did better than Manicaland, its immediate neighbour, where only 44 per cent appear to have voted. On the official figures, the opposition’s strongholds of Harare, Chitungwiza and Manicaland simply failed to deliver their voters.
There are several explanations for these discrepancies. It is possible, though unlikely, that the people of Mashonaland East are more diligent and politically aware than the rest of their fellow Zimbabweans. Yet the outcome is so convenient for Mr Mugabe that suspicious minds may come up with other theories. This province saw the most closely fought contest in the parliamentary polls during the June 2000 parliamentary elections. Sydney Sekeramayi, the Zanu PF candidate for Marondera East, scraped through by a margin of just 62 votes. This result was challenged in court, but Mr Sekeramayi, the defence minister and a close ally of Mr Mugabe, has survived in parliament. Now Mashonaland East may have delivered another welcome boost for the president. One explanation may gain currency. The government carefully printed an extra 1.5 million ballot papers, over and above the five million needed to serve every registered voter, for use in the election. Some of those may indeed have been put to good use.
Almost every rule of honest election management has been thrown out of the window during the government-inspired chaos of the presidential poll. For the most crucial contest in Zimbabwe’s history, every established procedure has been thrown into disarray. Many voters were simply barred from polling stations in Harare and the neighbouring city of Chitungwiza before most polls closed at 7pm on Sunday. Elsewhere in Zimbabwe, there was confusion over whether to begin the count yesterday morning, or wait for Harare and Chitungwiza to finish voting. State radio announced that counting would begin and confidently predicted that the first results would be known by last night. Then its news programme reported that officials in the town of Mutare had decided not to begin counting. The location of the ballot boxes was obscure. Some would have been under guard inside counting centres, in accordance with the rules. Others were, perhaps, en route from the polling stations. Those in Harare and Chitungwiza were still being used. Every stage of this process is filled with openings for trickery and independent scrutiny is minimal.