OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Tuesday 5.15pm.
COMMONWEALTH chief Don McKinnon said free and fair elections in Zimbabwe are possible, after talks with President Robert Mugabe on Tuesday.
“I believe it is possible to have a free election,” Secretary General McKinnon said after the hour-long meeting at Mugabe’s State House office in Harare.
“There are concerns that people have been killed, obviously, and I have conveyed these [to Mugabe], but we hope to see the level of violence down very much.”
McKinnon said he believes Mugabe is genuinely committed to reducing the level of violence, which has been exacerbated by the invasion of about 1300 white-owned commercial farms by self-styled war veterans, and to ensure that the June 24-25 parliamentary poll will be free and fair.
McKinnon, who was kept waiting almost 24-hours before being able to secure a meeting with Mugabe, said the president has agreed to the deployment of “40 plus” Commonwealth monitors and that these were likely to be deployed “fairly soon.”
“The Commonwealth only sends observers to where we are invited,” he said.
The monitors are to be joined by others from the South African Development Community, the Organisation of African Unity and the United States. “I imagine there will be a lot of observers on the ground,” he said.
The deployment of observers will help ensure a free and fair election, McKinnon said, adding: “That is certainly what the government has told me it wants to have.”
He has, he said, conveyed the concerns of an eight-member Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group, which met in London early this month to condemn Mugabe for failing to uphold the rule of law over the illegal farm occupations.
Mugabe has ignored calls to end the land invasions, but has warned that police will act against those perpetrating violence — a claim scoffed at by the Commercial Farmers Union, which has reported four of its members murdered by war veterans. — AFP