All eyes on Zimbabwe
2005-03-31 07:15
Harare - Voters in Zimbabwe began casting ballots on Thursday as polls opened in the Southern African country for landmark elections that President Robert Mugabe hopes will tighten his ruling party's 25-year grip on power.
Under a drizzling rain, about 200 people stood in a queue at a polling station in Harare's oldest township of Mbare to cast their ballots in the parliamentary elections, Zimbabwe's sixth since independence.
"I wanted to be the first in the queue, to be served early," said Beauty Chigutiare. "We need change."
"We want jobs, we want good houses," she said.
Some 5.7 million voters are eligible to vote in the elections that cap weeks of campaigning which have been surprisingly free of the bloodshed that marred previous votes in 2000 and 2002.
Africa's last independence leader, Mugabe is vying for a two-thirds majority for his Zanu-PF party in the elections but civic groups and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) say a shock may be in store for the 81-year-old veteran leader.
No violence
"What were the elections about? About who should govern and who should not," Mugabe told a final rally in Harare attended by 3 000 supporters of his Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF).
MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai also predicted a big win for his party but urged reconciliation at a final campaign stop in the village of Biriwiri, near the border with Mozambique.
"We hope the outcome of the election will provide an opportunity for national reconciliation and hopefully Zanu-PF will not be arrogant," said Tsvangirai, 53, a former union leader.
Whatever the outcome of the elections, Zimbabweans have been relieved by the lack of bloodshed in the campaign which analysts attribute to Mugabe's desire to regain legitimacy as a statesman after presiding over what the United States has dubbed one of the world's six "outposts of tyranny.'
The elections for 120 contested seats in parliament will be closely watched to determine whether Mugabe will adhere to regional guidelines on holding a free and fair vote that call for equal access to the media, freedom to hold rallies and the presence of international observers.
The United States on Tuesday said the vote "could be a turning point for Zimbabwe" due to the absence of violence.
But the European Union, whose election observers have also been taken off the list of guests, called the vote "a sham" and a "pseudo-election", with Luxembourg's junior foreign minister Nicolas Schmidt saying this week that the Europeans were "worried and shocked" by the campaign.
Two groups of civic organisations - the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) and the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition - both released reports on the eve of the vote to say that it would not be democratic, citing the ongoing climate of fear and intimidation in Zimbabwe politics.
- AFP