Zimbabwe’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) alleged on Sunday that voters in a key southwestern by-election have been bribed with food and intimidated into voting for the ruling party.
Voters in the poor, famine-hit rural district of Insiza were told ”they will be given maize only if the Zanu-PF (Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front) candidate wins,” the MDC claimed in a statement.
However, the official Electoral Supervisory Commission (ESC) told state radio it had received no complaints from either of the contestants or their parties of irregularities in the polls being held Saturday and Sunday.
Earlier the MDC claimed that Zanu-PF supporters had threatened voters outside a polling station ”instructing them to vote for Zanu-PF, in full view” of the police.
Police representative Bothwell Mugariri said that ”no incidents of violence, or threats of violence” had been reported to police in the constituency where a parliamentary seat was made vacant by the death of the incumbent MDC legislator earlier this year.
Three MDC supporters were arrested for campaigning too close to a polling station, he added.
The Insiza by-election is being seen as a test of the popularity of President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF in what has traditionally been an opposition stronghold.
The weeks preceding the election have been marred by rising political tensions, with at least 16 opposition supporters arrested.
The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) stopped distributing emergency food supplies in the constituency last week, charging that the ruling party was manipulating distribution.
More than half the southern African country’s population of 12 million people are threatened by famine this year. – Sapa-AFP