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: 2008-06-28 Time: 18:00:04 Posted By: Jan
By Dumiso Siboshiwe
Voters in urban areas stayed away from the one-candidate Zimbabwean presidential elections on Friday, or spoiled their ballots. But in the rural areas they turned out in larger numbers, partly in response to intimidation and violence.
Robert Mugabe was effectively the sole candidate in the run-off election, even though the name of Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai – who withdrew from the race on Sunday because of the mounting violence – remained on the ballot.
Residents were forced to vote, threatened by roving bands of government supporters searching for those without the pink ink-stained finger that showed they had voted.
In Harare’s high-density working class suburb Mbare, journalists followed residents who had voted from polling stations to nearby Zanu-PF “command centres” where they had to show their ink marks to prove they had voted. They also had to give their identity numbers and council flat numbers.
One of the voters said afterwards she had been told if they did not vote, they would lose their flats.
A witness in Chitungwiza, a town south of Harare, said voters were forced to hand the serial number of their ballot paper and their identity details to a Zanu-PF official so he could see how they voted.
The Zimbabwe Crisis Coalition rights group said village heads had “assisted” teachers to vote in some rural areas after forcing them to declare that they were illiterate. Many teachers are accused of supporting the MDC.
Militant Mugabe supporters roamed Harare’s streets, singing revolutionary songs, heckling people and asking why they were not voting.
“I’ve got no option but to go and vote so that I can be safe,” said a young woman selling tomatoes.
Tsvangirai, who has taken refuge in the Dutch embassy, said the results would “reflect only the fear of the people”.
“What is happening today is not an election. It is an exercise in mass intimidation,” he said at a news conference, adding that millions of people were staying away from the polls despite intimidation.
But state television denounced foreign media reports of low turnout.
It showed long queues in a semi-rural constituency close to Harare and said voters ignored the MDC’s appeals to abstain.
Though voting was generally peaceful, a local observer’s farm in Dowa, Manicaland, was burned down on the eve of the elections.
Paddington Japa-Japa told Independent Newspapers on Friday that 20 men, led by Zanu-PF’s Makoni West district chairperson, came and burned down his farmhouse and beat up his two brothers.
Japa-Japa’s story was corroborated by Joseph Madede and Tendai Chabarwa from the same area who said Zanu-PF youth were forcing villagers to vote.
“They threaten us that after the elections there will be Operation Blue Finger…what it means is that they will look at your finger and check if there is voting ink on it, and if not, they said they would beat us thoroughly,” he said.
Elsewhere, youth were bullying and frog-marching people to the polls, a Southern African Development Community (SADC) observer said.
Another SADC observer said the most disturbing trend was police’s intimidating presence inside polling stations, which is against the electoral laws.
Information Minister Bright Matonga said there had been “a massive turnout in rural areas”.
“And 75 percent of our voters are from there. There was a significant low turnout in the urban areas though,” said Matonga.
Winifred Mbiri, of Budiriro township outside Harare, said she did not vote.
“Vote for what? Mugabe has stolen these elections anyway. Most of my neighbours and friends stayed away,” Mbiri said.
Taxi driver Marokhato Katiyo of Chitungwiza said his actions were a symbolic “gesture of protest”.
“I went to spoil the paper. Our president (Tsvangirai) is not allowed to participate freely in the polls; who do I vote for?”
Observers in Mashonaland Central and South – Zanu-PF strongholds – said people were bused and trucked to polling stations.
Mugabe voted with his wife at Highfield Township, near Harare. Asked how he felt, he told journalists: “Very fit, optimistic, upbeat.”
Tsvangirai said he understood President Thabo Mbeki planned to recognise Mugabe’s re-election.
But he said it would be a “dream” to expect his MDC to join a national unity government with Mugabe’s Zanu-PF – Mbeki’s preferred solution to the Zimbabwe crisis.
World leaders roundly condemned the vote.
“Today’s election is a sham, the election is hollow and its result will be equally hollow and meaningless,” EU spokesperson Krisztina Nagy said in Brussels.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, speaking at a meeting in Japan, said the US would raise the issue of sanctions with other members of the UN Security Council.
Foreign ministers from the powerful G8 countries closed a two-day meeting in Japan with a joint statement deploring “the actions of the Zimbabwean authorities…which have made a free and fair presidential run-off election impossible”.