Government dismisses UN advice on elections

The Zimbabwean government has dismissed recommendations by elections experts from the United Nations, saying that their advice contained “nothing new.” Zimbabwe media reports quoted Tobaiwa Mudede, the country’s election supervisor as saying: “The team did not recommend anything to us but were told the situation and why we wanted to carry out the voter registration exercise.” During their fact finding mission the UN team found that between 10 and 25 percent of the people on the voters’ roll were now dead and that about 2 million of the estimated 5.8 million registered voters had moved constituencies since the last elections. Earlier this month President Robert Mugabe dismissed reports that parliamentary elections would only take place in June. He said that polls would most likely take place in March, but not later than the end of April.