Zimbabweans waited in long lines yesterday to cast ballots in parliamentary elections that President Robert Mugabe hopes will prove once and for all the legitimacy of a regime critics say is increasingly isolated and repressive.
Before any ballots were cast, opposition leaders and independent rights groups said the vote was already skewed by years of violence and intimidation.
Despite light rain, residents of the capital started gathering at the polls up to three hours before they opened. There were some delays as electoral officials completed last-minute preparations under the watchful eye of police.
PHOTO: AP
Mugabe accuses British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other Western leaders of backing the six-year-old Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), the first party to seriously challenge his rule. He dubbed yesterday's vote the "anti-Blair election," and MDC supporters "traitors."
"My vote today will be a vote for Zimbabwe's sovereignty," said Thomas Mseruka, a 46-year-old carpenter and ardent government supporter who cast his ballot in a neighborhood of dilapidated apartment buildings in Harare. "I'll be voting to defend our country."
The opposition countered that Blair wasn't running in yesterday's poll, which it says is about Mugabe's own failings after nearly 25 years in power.
The Zimbabwean economy has shrunk 50 percent over the past five years. Unemployment is at least 70 percent. Agriculture -- the economic base of Zimbabwe -- has collapsed and at least 70 percent of the population live in poverty.
Opposition leaders blame the country's economic woes on the government's often violent seizure of thousands of white-owned commercial farms for redistribution to black Zimbabweans.
Mugabe defends the program as a way of righting racial imbalances in land ownership inherited from British colonial rule, and blames food shortages on years of crippling drought.
At stake yesterday were 120 elected parliamentary seats. Mugabe appoints another 30 seats, virtually guaranteeing his Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front party a majority.
Some 5.8 million of Zimbabwe's nearly 12 million people were registered to vote. But up to 3.4 million Zimbabweans who live overseas -- many of whom are believed to be opposition supporters -- were barred from casting ballots.
The opposition MDC won 57 seats in the last parliamentary election in 2000, despite what Western observers called widespread violence, intimidation and vote rigging. But it has lost six seats in subsequent by-elections.
In 2002, MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai narrowly lost an equally flawed presidential poll.
Under mounting international pressure to produce a credible election result, Mugabe promised this year's balloting would be free and fair.
Despite some glitches, voting was proceeding peacefully and more quickly than in 2002, when the opposition accused officials of deliberately slowing down polling in their urban strongholds.
"Last time we just went home, came back, went home, came back, waiting to vote," said Alois Johani, a 52-year-old Harare resident. "But this time I think it will take only a few hours."
While there has been much less violence during this campaign, opposition leaders and rights groups said intimidation remained high. Residents in drought-stricken rural areas were told they could forfeit desperately needed food aid if they voted for the opposition, they said.
A series of repressive laws introduced since 2000 drastically curtailed the opposition's ability to meet, express its views and access the media. While restrictions eased in recent weeks to allow campaigning by all sides, rights groups said the damage was already done.
Mugabe's government hand-picked election observers, barring groups that were critical of previous polls.
Opposition leaders and rights groups also raised concerns about the voters' roll, which they believe is inflated with the names of hundreds of thousands of people who have died or moved away.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
RSS