Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, facing the toughest election battle of his 28 years in power, handed out hundreds of cars to doctors on Thursday in what opponents say is a vote buying campaign.
Mugabe's opponents said the veteran leader was plotting to rig today's presidential election, in which he faces old rival Morgan Tsvangirai and ruling party defector Simba Makoni.
Both accuse Mugabe, 84, of wrecking what was once one of Africa's strongest economies and pauperizing its people.
On national television, Mugabe blamed Zimbabwe's troubles on Western sanctions imposed on him and allies to try to force reform. Mugabe said the measures had harmed health care in Zimbabwe, one of the countries worst affected by HIV/AIDS.
"Our health sector [once] operated in a regional and international context that was free of the illegal sanctions which weigh us down today," Mugabe said in a ceremony to give 450 cars to senior and middle-level doctors at government hospitals.
He promised the doctors houses within two years.
In a procedural move, Mugabe told his ministers the Cabinet was dissolved ahead of the election.
"I told them that some would return to government, others will be left behind. The good performers will continue," Mugabe told a rally in the town of Bindura, 70km northeast of Harare.
Tsvangirai's main wing of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said on Thursday it had more evidence of planned ballot rigging and believed Mugabe was planning to declare victory with almost 60 percent of the vote.
Tsvangirai, Makoni and Arthur Mutambara, leader of the MDC's smaller faction, told reporters after holding talks that Mugabe had put the credibility of the election in doubt.
"We believe there is a very well thought out, sophisticated and premeditated plan to steal this election from us," Makoni said.
Mugabe has also handed out farm equipment and public buses in what critics say is an attempt to win political favor ahead of the vote in a country where many can no longer afford even basic needs and food and fuel are in short supply.
Critics say Mugabe's policies, particularly seizing white-owned farms to give to landless blacks, have led to ruin.
The March 29 presidential, parliamentary and local council polls are seen as the most important since Zimbabwe's independence from Britain in 1980, but few expect a fair vote.
Mugabe, who must win over half the presidential vote to avoid a second round run-off that might unite his opponents, rejects accusations of rigging three elections since 2000.
Tsvangirai told a rally in Chitungwiza just outside Harare that Mugabe had lost touch with reality.
"What Mugabe does not realize is that his system has collapsed," he said.
Meanwhile, the first white farmer convicted of defying an order to vacate his property under Zimbabwe's campaign to put more land in black hands was given a suspended prison sentence on Thursday.
A Harare magistrate gave Deon Theron, a vice president of the white-dominated Commercial Farmers Union, one month to leave his farm and a six-month prison sentence, suspended for five years on condition he does not violate the Land Act.
Theron's lawyer said he would appeal the conviction and sentence.
The 53-year-old dairy farmer was convicted on Tuesday of unlawfully remaining on his farm after it was declared state land. The prosecutor had called for his imprisonment.
The prosecutor, who was addressed in court as Mr. Zvakare, urged a quick sentencing saying it was "a serious criminal case."
Observers inside and outside Zimbabwe blame the meltdown of the country's agriculture-based economy on the often violent seizures of white-owned commercial farms that began on President Mugabe's orders in 2000. Hyperinflation, goods shortages and crumbling infrastructure have been key campaign issues in the approach to general elections today.
Theron owns 400 head of dairy cattle on a 400-hectare farm south of Harare and supplies 8,000 liters of milk a day to stores in Harare at a time when shortages of milk and dairy products are chronic.
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