Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai on Wednesday predicted ”a huge turnout” in a presidential election run-off despite what critics say is a campaign of violence and intimidation by the government.
Tsvangirai, who leads the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), will face off against veteran President Robert Mugabe on June 27. Official results showed Tsvangirai won a first round in March but without enough votes to secure an outright victory.
”On the ground people are exuberant, they are triumphant, they are defiant. They want to finish him off, come the 27th … frankly, we’re going to have a huge turnout,” Tsvangirai told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).
Western countries and human rights groups accuse Mugabe of using his supporters to intimidate those who oppose him. Mugabe blames his opponents for the violence.
The MDC leader has been repeatedly detained during the campaign and one of his top lieutenants faces a treason charge. Tsvangirai said all MDC rallies had been banned.
”The whole country is under siege. In certain areas there is almost total war … We are really dealing with a man who does not want to give up power,” he told CBC radio.
Mugabe (84) has ruled since independence from Britain in 1980. His support has waned amid a desperate economic crisis that has brought hyper-inflation and major food shortages.
Some media reports have quoted unnamed senior Mugabe officials as saying they do not want the president to leave because they fear they could be put on trial.
Tsvangirai said he had made clear that if he won, his priority would be to deal with the economic crisis rather than prosecuting top officials.
”We have said from day one that that’s not our focus — our focus is to rehabilitate the country, respond to the peoples’ problems and move forward. But because the guilty are afraid, there is a tendency always to believe that they will be prosecuted,” he said.
”If we were to contemplate even prosecuting that kind of vendetta, then suddenly we would have very little room to talk about the humanitarian crisis we are facing.”
Charities
Meanwhile, Zimbabwe has lifted a ban on charities operating food and Aids programmes, state media said on Wednesday, and expelled a United Nations rights official ahead of the run-off.
With violence mounting before the June 27 vote, South African President Thabo Mbeki arrived in Harare to meet Mugabe, who is facing the toughest challenge to his nearly three-decade rule.
Mbeki serves as mediator between Zimbabwe’s ruling party and the MDC, having been appointed to the post by the 14-nation Southern African Development Community. He declined to answer reporters’ questions after landing.
The announcement of the lifting of the ban on aid work for NGOs involved in food distribution and Aids treatment followed a top UN official’s meeting with Mugabe on Tuesday.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon had previously urged Mugabe to allow aid to be delivered, and charities had warned of a potential humanitarian crisis in the impoverished country if the ban remained in place.
The state-run Herald newspaper cited the government’s acting welfare secretary as saying the recently imposed ban on all aid work would not prevent Aids patients from ”accessing drugs and therapeutic feeding from clinics and hospitals”.
Food programmes would also be allowed since they do not ”entail community mobilisation by NGOs”, Sydney Mhishi said.
NGOs provide food and medicine to children and clinics, mostly in rural areas.
The government imposed a blanket suspension on all aid work earlier this month after accusing NGOs of siding with the opposition ahead of the run-off.
Despite the move to lift the ban, there were further signs of a pre-vote crackdown Wednesday when UN human rights commissioner Louise Arbour announced the expulsion of a Geneva-based UN desk officer.
The officer travelled to Zimbabwe on Sunday but was expelled on Tuesday, said Arbour, who denounced the move by Harare as ”uncooperative” and ”untimely”.
On Tuesday, Mugabe met with a top UN official who is in the country to evaluate the political situation ahead of the vote.
Haile Menkerios, UN assistant secretary general for political affairs responsible for Africa, met on Wednesday with Tsvangirai, who expressed his concerns about mounting violence ahead of the poll.
The Herald quoted Menkerios as saying he was there ”to find out what measures are being put in place to ensure there is a free, fair and transparent run-off and what we as the UN can do to support Zimbabwe”.
”The reports have been about violence, people being displaced, houses being burnt,” he said. ”The [UN] secretary general is concerned about what measures can be put in place ahead of the elections.”
‘Criminal cabal’
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Wednesday that Zimbabwe was being run by a ”criminal cabal” and that a presidential election held now could not be free and fair.
Brown said South Africa’s governing African National Congress (ANC) party backed the idea of sending 1 000 ANC observers to monitor the June 27 run-off.
He demanded that observers from around the world, not just Africa, be let in to monitor the ballot and urged Mugabe to let in a UN human rights envoy.
Mugabe’s government ”is a criminal regime run by a criminal cabal and we must make that clear to the rest of the world”, Brown told lawmakers during his weekly questions session in Parliament’s lower House of Commons.
Brown told Parliament that there had been 53 people killed, 2 000 injured, 30 000 displaced and four million in need of food aid and being denied food aid by the regime.
”These are not circumstances in which a free and fair election at this stage can take place,” he said.
”We have asked the regime to allow in observers for the 9 400 polling stations that exist. Hundreds of observers have gone in, more observers are to go in.”
Brown said he had been in contact with ANC president Jacob Zuma on Sunday.
”I made it clear to him, and he supported the idea, that there would be 1 000 monitors from the ANC party offered to Zimbabwe so that they too can play their part in the election,” he told lawmakers. — Reuters, AFP