Voters in main cities defy reprisal threats to avoid ‘sham’ presidential poll

Financial Times
By Tony Hawkins in Harare and Tom Burgis in Johannesburg
June 28 2008

Voters in Zimbabwe’s main cities boycotted yesterday’s presidential polls in defiance of the threat of reprisals against anyone not voting for the only candidate: Robert Mugabe.

“None of us are bothering to vote,” said Angela, a young hairdresser. “I don’t know anyone who is.”

Marwick Khumalo, head of the Pan-African Parliament observer mission, said queues at polling stations in Harare – the capital and an MDC stronghold – were much smaller than they were for the first-round March election. Then the autocratic Mr Mugabe was beaten into second place by Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.

“The turnout is very, very low,” Mr Khumalo said. “We have not yet seen the ingredients necessary to make the poll free and fair.”

David Coltart, an MDC senator in Bulawayo, another MDC stronghold, said that all but two of the 15 polling stations he had visited were deserted.

It was a different story in some of Harare’s densely populated townships – which have been targeted by militias loyal to Mr Mugabe’s Zanu-PF – where there were long queues of people waiting to vote by mid-morning. State radio reported that at one rural polling station crowds of people “could not wait” to endorse Mr Mugabe.

Independent information from rural areas, which include Zanu-PF’s heartlands, was scarce because of poor communications and an absence of observers.

“Lots of people were planning to boycott the elections, or to spoil their ballots or vote for Tsvangirai,” said a diplomatic source from Har-are. “But we also hear that the military will be frogmarching people to go to vote.”

Mr Tsvangirai said that militias were forcing rural voters to record the serial numbers of their ballots in order to identify those who voted for his party.

MDC leaders and civil groups say security forces hope a high turnout will provide legitimacy for a run-off condemned by many, including the European Commission, as a “sham”.

The MDC fears that anyone whose hands do not carry the ink used for marking ballots will be targeted in “Operation Red Finger”.
Mr Tsvangirai – who says he withdrew to spare supporters’ lives – remains on the ballot because the electoral authorities ruled his withdrawal came too late.

“If possible, we ask you not to vote today,” he wrote in a final pre-election e-mail to supporters, from his refuge at the Dutch embassy in Harare. “But if you must vote for Mr Mugabe because of threats on your life today, then do so.”

The opposition says at least 86 of its supporters have been killed and 200,000 people displaced in state-sponsored electoral violence.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

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