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Challenger in Zimbabwe Calls for Investigation Into Election
Challenger to Zimbabwe’s President Says Election Was a ‘Huge Farce’
(about 11 hours later)
HARARE, Zimbabwe — Morgan Tsvangirai, the challenger to Zimbabwe’s longtime president, Robert Mugabe, declared on Thursday that the country’s presidential election had been a “huge farce” and called upon international observers to investigate.
HARARE, Zimbabwe — Morgan Tsvangirai, the challenger to Zimbabwe’s longtime president, Robert Mugabe, asserted Thursday that the country’s presidential election had been a “huge farce” and called upon international observers to investigate what he described as widespread irregularities.
Mr. Tsvangirai said the vote failed to meet “international standards for a credible, legitimate, free and fair election.” The Zimbabwe Election Commission has not released official election results, but from the tone of Mr. Tsvangirai’s statement it appeared that his party, the Movement for Democratic Change, was headed for defeat.
Senior leaders of Mr. Mugabe’s party, ZANU-PF, meanwhile, said they expected a huge victory, retaining the presidency and recapturing a majority of the Parliament.
“In our view, the outcome of this election is illegitimate,” Mr. Tsvangirai said in a statement. “But more importantly, the shoddy manner in which it has been conducted and the consequent illegitimacy of the result will plunge this country into a serious crisis.”
“This victory is so sweet,” said Saviour Kasukuwere, a top minister in Mr. Mugabe’s party, who added he was handily re-elected to his parliamentary seat. He rejected the accusation that the vote had been manipulated.
The Zimbabwe Election Support Network, a coalition of local groups that observed the election, also said that the election was marred by serious problems despite the lack of violence.
“President Mugabe did not rig this election,” he said. “President Mugabe was voted overwhelmingly by the people of Zimbabwe.”
But Mr. Tsvangirai said the vote failed to meet “international standards for a credible, legitimate, free and fair election.”
The Zimbabwe Election Commission has not released official results in the presidential election, but from the tone of Mr. Tsvangirai’s statement, it appeared that his party, the Movement for Democratic Change, was headed for defeat.
“In our view, the outcome of this election is illegitimate,” Mr. Tsvangirai, 61, said in a statement. “But more importantly, the shoddy manner in which it has been conducted and the consequent illegitimacy of the result will plunge this country into a serious crisis.”
The vote, which took place Wednesday, was meant to resolve years of political crisis in Zimbabwe, ending an uneasy power-sharing agreement that put the ruling party and the opposition into government together.
The tense arrangement was the result of a disastrous election season in 2008, when Mr. Tsvangirai won more votes than Mr. Mugabe in the first round of voting but refused to participate in a runoff because of state-sponsored attacks on his supporters. More than 200 people were killed.
This time, the vote was almost entirely free of violence, but the Zimbabwe Election Support Network, a coalition of local groups that observed the election, said the contest had nevertheless been marred by serious problems.
“We should not judge this election on the basis of peace and calm,” the group said. “There are other factors to take into account.”
“We should not judge this election on the basis of peace and calm,” the group said. “There are other factors to take into account.”
It said that as many as a million urban voters had been disenfranchised, which would have a particularly negative impact on the challengers, since the Movement for Democratic Change’s support base is largely in Zimbabwe’s cities.
It said that urban voters were significantly underrepresented on the contested voter rolls and disproportionately turned away at polling stations, a serious blow to the challengers because the Movement for Democratic Change’s support base is largely in Zimbabwe’s cities.
Millions of Zimbabweans went to the polls in what many here were calling the most pivotal election since the country voted out white rule. Despite frigid predawn temperatures, people lined up before the polling stations opened on Wednesday, eager to decide whether to end or extend the three-decade tenure of Mr. Mugabe, a liberation war hero who still holds a tight grip on the country.
Much of the criticism centered on the list of registered voters, which was supposed to be made available in electronic form long before the day of the election so that candidates and observers could scrutinize it for ghost voters, duplicate registrations and other irregularities.
For Nyaradzai Majuru, the choice of how to cast her ballot was simple. Before she and her husband received a two-acre plot of land that had been seized from a white farmer several years ago, they were penniless subsistence farmers on a scrap of communal land. Now, they grow green beans, sweet potatoes, tomatoes and cabbages that they sell in the market.
But the roll was given to the parties only the day before the election and on paper, making it almost impossible to analyze quickly. The vote had been rushed by Mr. Mugabe, who unilaterally declared that it must be held by the end of July, leaving little time or money to organize the election.
“Our life is better now because of President Mugabe,” said Ms. Majuru, 27, her youngest child tied to her back with a blanket, referring to Mr. Mugabe, 89, who has led this country since it shook off white rule in 1980. “I support him all the way.”
Douglas Mwonzora, a senior official in Mr. Tsvangirai’s party, said he had lost his parliamentary seat, along with 15 other party members in Manicaland Province. Sounding shellshocked by the results, he said that it was not possible that the vote was legitimate.
But for 40-year-old Elizabeth, a janitor at an agricultural college in this small farming town 20 miles north of the capital, life has grown worse under Mr. Mugabe’s rule. Hyperinflation wiped out her savings. Hunger gnawed at her family. A lucky few got land, but the country’s economy was destroyed, she said, declining to give her last name out of fear of reprisals by the government.
“It is a type of seat that nobody, including myself, expected it to go anywhere,” Mr. Mwonzora said. “Right now, the villages are distraught that their vote has been stolen.”
“We need change in this country,” Elizabeth said. “We are tired of this old man.”
Aside from problems with the voter rolls, Mr. Mwonzora said that rural voters in his area had been rounded up by traditional chiefs and “frog-marched to the polls, where they were forced to tell the polling agents they were illiterate and needed assistance,” at which point ZANU-PF loyalists would force them to vote for the party.
In Harare, the capital, on Wednesday, there was none of the violence and intimidation that characterized the disastrous 2008 presidential election season, when 200 people died in a state-sponsored crackdown on the opposition and others seen as supporting it.
Despite all the problems, the Movement for Democratic Change, or M.D.C., decided to participate in the election rather than boycott it, calculating that frustration with Mr. Mugabe’s 33-year rule would overwhelm efforts to rig the results at the margin. The party’s supporters turned out in huge numbers at a final rally on Monday, pledging en masse to vote Mr. Mugabe, 89, out of office.
The election pit Mr. Mugabe against the former union organizer, Mr. Tsvangiri, who won the most votes in the first round of the election in 2008 but refused to participate in a runoff because of the attacks on his supporters. A deal brokered by regional powers put the two rivals into an uneasy power-sharing agreement, and both are now seeking an outright victory to govern alone.
Now the challengers’ party, which was started in 1999 in response to Mr. Mugabe’s increasingly autocratic rule, finds itself in a precarious position. If observers from the African Union and the Southern African Development Community, a regional trade bloc, sign off on the election as being free and fair, the party will have few options.
“It is quite an emotional moment sometimes when you see all these people after all the conflict, the stalemate, the suspicion, the hostility,” Mr. Tsvangirai said on Wednesday after casting his ballot. “I think there is a sense of calmness that finally Zimbabwe will be able to move on again.”
Mr. Mwonzora defended the Movement for Democratic Change’s decision to participate in the election, despite calling the vote illegal.
Sporadic problems were reported in a number of regions. Lines were long in urban areas, raising concerns that not everyone would be able to vote Wednesday. The challengers said the Zimbabwe Election Commission had deliberately reduced the number of polling stations in their strongholds to discourage voters, but the commission denied it. Some voters who registered recently found that their names were not on the rolls, but they were able to cast ballots using the registration receipt.
“The logic of the M.D.C. participating in an unfair and unfree election was to try to save the Constitution,” Mr. Mwonzora said. “We wanted to prevent ZANU-PF from getting a two-thirds majority, which would allow them to do anything they want.”
“We’ve already made clear this election is illegal, illegitimate, unfree and unfair,” said Tendai Biti, the secretary general of the Movement for Democratic Change, at a news conference on Wednesday afternoon. “We are participating with a heavy heart.”
He said the party was weighing its options and awaiting the final results before deciding on a response.
The planning for the election has been chaotic and rushed because Mr. Mugabe unilaterally set a much earlier election date than other political parties had anticipated.
But early reports from election officials and some monitors said that the voting had gone well. Olusegun Obasanjo, the former president of Nigeria who is leading the African Union observer delegation, said that based on initial reports the voting had been peaceful and orderly, and appeared to be free and fair.
Joyce Kazembe, the deputy chairwoman of the Zimbabwe Election Commission, said, “I believe that the election is free and fair.” Turnout was very high, the commission said, and it ordered that polling stations stay open until midnight to accommodate people waiting in long lines.
Mr. Mugabe, after casting his ballot, appeared confident of victory in remarks to reporters. Asked if he would serve a full five-year term, he said: “Why not? Why should I field myself if it’s to cheat the people and I resign after?”
Fears of rigging remained high. Neil Padmore, 35, brought a pen to the polling station because he had heard people say that the government’s pens used special ink that would disappear a few hours after the ballot was cast.
“I am hoping that the sheer volume of the voters will prevent them from rigging,” said Mr. Padmore, who runs a company that lays fiber optic cable. “We need change in Zimbabwe. We can’t have this draconian environment.”
But some voters said Mr. Mugabe and his party, ZANU-PF, deserved to stay in power because they put Zimbabwe’s agricultural land, long controlled by a few thousand white commercial farmers, into the hands of black people through seizures.
Amina, a 26-year-old clothing trader who lives in Mbare and asked that only her first name be used, said her brother had been given a farm by the government and was prospering.
“He’s getting rich by the season,” she said. Her father fought in Mr. Mugabe’s insurgent army in the 1970s and lost a leg to a bomb. Mr. Mugabe, she said, made black people masters of their own destiny.
“He always told us the main grievance for the war was that we needed land,” she said. “They wanted to be masters of their own country.”
