Zimbabwe’s High Court rejected a request by the opposition on Wednesday to block soldiers and policemen and other armed security officials from staffing polling stations at upcoming elections for district council and two parliamentary seats.
Judge Tedias Karwi ruled the action was not urgent and could not be heard before the elections scheduled for this weekend, said Bryant Elliot, a lawyer for the Movement for Democratic Change.
The opposition asked Karwi on Tuesday to order the state Electoral Supervisory Commission in charge of the elections to stop armed security personnel working for it.
Under electoral laws, the state commission should be staffed by civilian government employees, Elliot said.
But the commission was ”stacked” with agents of from Zimbabwe’s secret police force as well as regular policemen and soldiers, he said.
There was no immediate comment from the government on the makeup of the commission.
Zimbabwe has no independent body to run elections. Independent local monitors are accredited by the state body and in the past have been prevented from carrying out some of their work by commission officials and the police and military.
The weekend elections are for local councils and mayoral posts in 16 districts across the country and two parliamentary seats. One parliamentary seat is for a central area of Harare, an opposition stronghold, and the other for Makonde, a ruling party stronghold in northwestern Zimbabwe.
Campaigning has been marred by allegations of political violence by both parties.
State election commission spokesman Thomas Bvuma said it had mainly received complaints of violence against opposition supporters.
The opposition also reported discrepancies in voter registration lists for the parliamentary seat election in Harare, he said.
Opposition director of elections Remus Makuwaza said the names of at least 1 700 voters who cast ballots in the last elections in the district were found to be missing from current lists.
Among missing names were Susan Tsvangirai, wife of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai. Another 20 000 voters were found to have been improperly registered for the weekend polls.
”There has been a deliberate attempt to disenfranchise those voters perceived to be (opposition) supporters and they have been replaced by ghost voters,” Makuwaza said.
The opposition, meanwhile, reported a gasoline bomb attack early Wednesday on the home of one of its local council candidates in the lakeside town of Kariba in northwestern Zimbabwe.
It also reported violence against polling agents and campaigners in the Midlands provincial towns of Gweru, Kwekwe and Kadoma.
The ruling party’s parliamentary candidate in Harare, William Nhara, reported attacks on his supporters by opposition militants in the run-up to polling.
Foreign and independent observers of parliamentary and presidential elections since 2000 say both were swayed by political violence, mostly by ruling party militants, corruption and vote rigging.
Zimbabwe is suffering record inflation of 400% and soaring unemployment. There are acute shortages of local currency, hard currency, food, gasoline, medicine and other imports in the worst economic crisis since independence.
According to the UN food agency, at least 5,5-million people, nearly half the population, will need emergency food aid by the end of the year to avert famine. – Sapa-AP