Posted on 03/12/2002 8:52:48 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Edited on 09/03/2002 4:50:05 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
BANKET, Zimbabwe -- Just in case ruling party thugs drop by, a sentry with a rifle guards the gate at Duke du Coudray's farm supply store, where a well-stocked emergency hospital and radio communications center compete for space with gloves, fishing poles and fertilizer for the area's worried white farmers.
As Zimbabweans packed the polls Sunday for a second day of voting in the hotly contested presidential race, Banket's farmers were busy providing support for the party whose success they consider vital to the nation's future and their own, the Movement for Democratic Change.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
I doubt that even the election results are riding on the vote.
Assessment of the presidential campaign and election by the Zimbabwe Election Support Network
He would have lost a fair election. That much is obvious. But he is going to declare himself the winner, and the rest of the world will go along with it, because it's not PC to stick up for the white farmers and the vast majority of the country that support them.
So, these farmers had better have a plan to leave after the votes are "counted" because I suspect that when the election results are announced, Mugabe will unleash hell.
Well said.
"The election well has been poisoned to such an extent that there is unlikely to be any other result," than a Mugabe victory, said Brian Raftopolous, head of a collection of church and civic groups known as the Crisis in Zimbabwe Committee.
Committee members said they were discussing whether or not to organize a nationwide general strike to channel voter anger into a peaceful protest. "We are concerned about a spontaneous eruption of anger, particularly in urban areas," Raftopolous said.
The opposition party complained Tuesday that its observers were locked out of ballot counting centers in the capital, Harare, and the country's second largest city, Bulawayo. The opposition also said ruling party militants were trying to intimidate opposition observers at two other counting centers.
Militants from Mugabe's party were seen outside at least one Harare counting station. First results were expected Wednesday.
The Zimbabwe Election Support Network, a coalition of non-governmental organizations, produced a laundry list of problems related to the election, including flawed voter rolls, intimidation and attacks on voters by police and ruling party militants and the deployment of voting stations in a way that clearly favored Mugabe.
"There is no way these elections can be described as substantially free and fair," Reginald Matchaba-Hove, chairman of the network, said. "Tens of thousands of Zimbabweans have been deliberately and systematically disenfranchised."
The Norwegian Observer Mission found flaws in every step of the electoral process, said Kare Vollan, head of the 25-member mission. "The presidential elections failed to meet key, broadly accepted criteria for elections," Vollan said. [End Excerpt]
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