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.
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