[That will be the day! Jan]

Pretoria – Sweden wants the South African government to tighten the screws on President Robert Mugabe to ensure that conditions for a free and fair election exist before next year™s parliamentary polls. Swedish foreign minister Laila Freivalds told journalists here yesterday after meeting her South African counterpart Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma that Pretoria should do more to rein in Mugabe. Mugabe has said that Zimbabwe™s sixth parliamentary polls will be held in March. Freivaids said the withdrawal of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) from the elections was “bad news”. Hence South Africa needed to pressure Mugabe to hold elections under conditions that were acceptable to all political players in the country. “Democracy needs pluralism and an open debate. As neighbours you have an important role to try to change the negative development in Zimbabwe,” she said. Human rights abuses and election rigging in Zimbabwe, she said, had reached alarming levels. “We are very worried, not only about elections but also the human rights abuses in Zimbabwe,” Freivalds said.

The MDC last week announced that it would not participate in all future elections unless the government made sweeping changes to the current legal and political framework. The opposition party said it wanted the government to implement electoral guidelines agreed to by Southern African Development Community (SADC) recently. These include equal access to the public media by all political parties, the setting up of independent bodies to run elections, a transparent electoral process, free electioneering for all parties and the upholding of the rule of law and of human and individual rights in the run-up to and during elections. The MDC also wants a stop to political violence and the repealing of repressive legislation which has been used to close down newspapers and stop opposition political campaigns by the government. But the ruling Zanu PF party has bluffed the MDC election boycott threat saying that the election would go ahead, even if the opposition party boycotted the process.

The opposition has accused Mugabe of using a flawed electoral process to rig previous elections. Mugabe denies the charge. Freivalds shot down assertions by Zuma that South Africa would pursue its quiet diplomacy policy on Zimbabwe. “Her (view) is that silent diplomacy is the best way. We would agree if we saw results from that diplomatic approach. But we don™t, and so we are worried. It™s important to have patience when putting pressure on a country but there are limits to that patience,” she told journalists. South Africa has insisted that it would not publicly lash out at Mugabe for the last five years. Freivalds said the European Union, which has slapped travel and economic sanctions on Mugabe and members of his ruling elite, was pursuing other methods to squeeze Mugabe to accept reform.

From The Daily News Online Edition, 1 September
Source: WWW.ZwNews.Com