Two reports issued on Wednesday reinforced concern that Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF party won last week’s parliamentary election through fraud.
Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change gave evidence of what it said was ”serious and unaccountable gaps” with more than 200 000 votes unaccounted for in the announcement of official results before and after counting ballots last week.
Another report by 35 teams of observers from the United States embassy said there were ”several patterns of irregularities” that raised concern about the freeness and fairness of the process.
It spoke of the ”improper role” of uniformed police and ruling-party polling agents in the supervision and conduct of polling stations, taking control from officials of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC), which was supposed to run the elections.
Police and Zanu-PF polling agents were counting votes in polling stations and communicating results to regional centres, and presiding officers confiscated notes from MDC polling agents and independent observers, it said.
Some polling stations were ”associated with the distribution of food”, it said.
Zanu-PF was given 78 seats in Parliament, while 41 went to the MDC. An independent, former information minister Jonathan Moyo, got one seat. With another unelected 30 seats appointed by Mugabe through a constitutional provision, the ruling party received a landslide of more than two-thirds of the 150-seat Parliament.
The poll has been condemned by United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan as well as the United States, British and Australian governments, but it was pronounced ”the legitimate expression of the will of the people of Zimbabwe” by observer delegations from South Africa and the 14-nation Southern African Development Community.
Also on Wednesday, the MDC said ”scores of party supporters had been injured, some of whom were in hospital, after winning Zanu-PF led their supporters in attacks of retribution around the country”.
Nyathi said in a statement that MDC supporters had been attacked in at least five constituencies, in one of which a Zanu-PF MP opened fire with a pistol on a group, several people had their property destroyed by mobs and at least one had his home burnt down.
MDC secretary general Welshman Ncube said copies of the MDC’s preliminary report on the discrepancies in voting numbers, as well of videotapes of official election announcements on state television and in copies of a local newspaper, were given on Wednesday morning to the ZEC, which is appointed by Mugabe.
Late on Thursday night while votes were still being counted, a senior ZEC official broadcast the total number of ballots cast in 72 constituencies. The announcements stopped at about midnight without explanation.
The next morning, however, the ZEC began broadcasting the results of the count. Immediately, discrepancies emerged when the number of votes for each candidate were added together and compared with the figures of a few hours earlier.
”The MDC and the people know full well who the real winners are,” said MDC spokesperson Paul Nyathi. ”This election was stolen.” — Sapa-DPA