'Damage already done'
2005-03-31 22:22
Special Report
Foreign airlines have stopped using Zimbabwe's airspace because the country's meteorological service is incapable of supplying weather information they need, according to officials.
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe says he doesn't expect the US sanctions on his country to be lifted soon.
Harare - On the surface, it looked good: Zimbabweans lined up peacefully and cast ballots in a parliamentary election President Robert Mugabe says will vindicate his nearly 25-year rule.
But opposition leaders and independent rights groups said the poll was slanted before it even started.
"We are not happy with the way the electoral playing field has been organised, and I think we all agree, on all benchmarks, this is not going to be a free and fair election," opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai said as he cast his ballot at a primary school in an upmarket Harare suburb.
Under mounting international pressure to produce a credible result, Mugabe's government and party ratcheted down the bloodletting that has plagued previous elections. For the first time in years, Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change party was able to campaign openly, even in the government's rural strongholds.
Mugabe was confident on Thursday the gamble would pay off, saying he was "entirely, completely, totally optimistic" of victory for his Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front. He said he only voted to increase the margin of the win.
However, encouraged by the drop in violence, Tsvangirai held out hope his party could muster enough support to claim Parliament.
The MDC won 57 of Parliament's 120 elected seats in the last parliamentary election in 2000, despite what Western observers called widespread violence, intimidation and vote rigging. But it lost six seats in subsequent by-elections. Mugabe appoints an additional 30 seats, virtually guaranteeing his party a majority.
Traitors
In 2002, Tsvangirai was narrowly declared loser of an equally flawed presidential poll.
Mugabe accuses British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other Western leaders of backing the six-year-old MDC, the first party to seriously challenge his rule since he lead Zimbabwe to independence in 1980. He dubbed Thursday's vote the "anti-Blair election", and MDC supporters "traitors".
"My vote today will be a vote for Zimbabwe's sovereignty," said Thomas Mseruka, a 46-year-old carpenter and ardent government supporter who cast his ballot in a neighbourhood of dilapidated apartment buildings in Harare.
The opposition countered that Blair wasn't running in Thursday's poll, which it said was about Mugabe's own failings.
Zimbabwe's economy has shrunk 50% over the past five years. Unemployment is at least 70%. Agriculture - the country's economic base - has collapsed, and at least 70 percent of the population live in poverty.
"I think it is time that somebody else took control of the country and do a better job to insure that those like me actually get jobs," said Ketae Dikit, 31, a vegetable vendor.
- SAPA