Election fairness questioned

Zimbabwe’s ruling ZANU-PF party of President Robert Mugabe has allegedly set the stage to rig parliamentary elections initially scheduled for this month, human rights and opposition organisations told IRIN.

They claimed that the voter registration process has been conducted under controversial circumstances, and alleged that the government was preparing to draft in ZANU-PF supporters as polling monitors after recently announcing that teachers would no longer be used.

An official of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) told IRIN on Wednesday that although a large number of voters have registered, they were not provided with proof of registration. “This effectively means that voters could be turned away on election day or their votes thrown out if it appears that an opposition party has won more votes in a particular constituency,” the official said.

Bidi Munyaradzi, the director of ZimRights, said the human rights body is disturbed by the absence of documentary proof of registration. “This lack of documentary proof of registration has serious implications for the fairness of the elections,” Munyaradzi said.

He said that under the Electoral Act, a registered voter should be issued with a green voter’s card. “The election results can be rigged by either deleting the names of those who are perceived to be supporters of opposition parties from the voters roll, or by fiddling with ballots in certain constituencies.”

Munyaradzi said ZimRights and other civic organisations are encouraging registered voters to inspect the voters roll to ensure that they have been registered. “Civic organisations don’t have the resources to inspect the voters roll in the whole country. We would need large amounts of money to conduct such an operation,” he said.

Jonathan Moyo, a key ZANU-PF campaign strategist dismissed concerns that the voter’s roll could be tampered with. He told IRIN that registered voters must inspect the voter’s roll to ensure that their names appear. He also claimed that the opposition was using donor money “to pay people to go and register”.

Meanwhile, MDC spokesman Learnmore Jongwe said he was “very concerned” that the government, after announcing it would no longer use teachers as polling agents, would call on war veterans instead. He said that this, particularly in the rural areas, would be another example of alleged ZANU-PF intimidation.