By-election poll compromised by violent run-up

Voting ended on Sunday in a rural parliamentary by-election viewed as a key test for Zimbabwe’s opposition ahead of next year’s presidential elections. An estimated 22,000 people out of 40,000 registered voters cast their ballots in the two-day election in Bikita West, 330 km southeast of the capital Harare. The result is expected to be announced late on Monday. Phil Matsheza, chair of the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN), an NGO that has had observers in the area since mid-December, told IRIN on Monday that his team of 120 has seen no instances of vote-rigging or overt foul play over the weekend. But Matsheza said some of his observers had reported village chiefs leading voters to the polling stations and in some cases reminding them how to vote. “Remember that both parties want to win this one very badly and both sides have used violence to further that end.” He added that the violence and intimidation in the run-up to the poll that led to the death of one ZANU-PF supporter and left several other people injured, had “seriously compromised” the right of individuals to vote as they pleased. Election officials confirmed that the poll was completed largely without incident, but police arrested three suspected supporters of the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) on Saturday for stoning the vehicle of Chenjerai Hunzvi, leader of liberation war veterans who spearheaded the ruling ZANU-PF’s election campaign. The gangs of youths drafted in by both sides and reportedly responsible for much of the pre-poll violence in Bikita-West were in evidence over the weekend according to ZESN observers, but they stayed away from polling stations. “Our evidence suggests that ZANU-PF was initially responsible for what a local teacher referred to as ‘a reign of terror’ in Bikita West,” Matsheza said. “But this may backfire on them, as one in four voters were turned away from the polling stations because they were not registered. One of the main reasons for this was because NGO’s like ourselves could not get to do voter education because of the violence,” Matsheza said. He added that it was mainly elderly people who were excluded for not being on the voters’ roll and that they would probably have voted for ZANU-PF. Bikita West, in one of ZANU-PF’s traditional rural strongholds, was narrowly won by the MDC in parliamentary elections last June, but fell vacant in November when its deputy died. An MDC victory in the by-election would indicate its progress in rural areas - which ZANU-PF has historically dominated - after making a near-clean sweep of urban seats in June. Asked whether the events in Bikita-West bode well for next-year’s crucial presidential election, Matsheza was not optimistic: “What’s sad is that violence has now become an acceptable campaigning tool in Zimbabwean elections, and the higher the stakes, the more violence we can expect, I think.”