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Tsvangirai threatens to quit poll
21/03/2008 12:02 - (SA)
Harare - Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai threatened on Thursday to withdraw from elections next week, if Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's government fails to follow electoral law on the vote count.
The head of the larger faction of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change claimed at a press conference that electoral authorities were planning to carry out the count in a "national command centre", instead of in each of the country's 11 000 polling stations.
"We now hear the counting of house of assembly and senate (the lower and upper chambers in the legislature respectively) votes will be in constituency centres, and the presidential vote will be counted in a national command centre," he told a press conference, without elaborating on the source of the information.
'Results could be changed'
"If that happens I will not participate in such a process." According to election watchdog groups, the "national command centre" was the final stage in the result process, staffed largely by military officers, and where results in previous elections had been changed to suit Mugabe. The command centre does not appear in electoral law.
Tsvangirai also said that the election would not be free and fair, but added, "we accept all that," and said the MDC had been hoping to "minimise" abuses and irregularities.
Presidential, house of assembly, senate and local council elections are due to be held on a single day on March 29.
Zimbabwean electoral law prescribes counting of ballot papers for candidates in each of the elections to be carried out in the polling stations where the ballots were cast. The totals for all candidates then have to be written out and stuck on the door of the polling station as public notices.
This law, and several others, are part of reforms that were agreed in negotiations, sponsored by the Southern African Development Community, the 14-nation regional alliance, and held under the chairmanship of South African President Thabo Mbeki. Opposition parties and human rights organisations say Mugabe has abrogated all the significant reforms.
Police in polling stations
Tsvangirai also highlighted Mugabe's use of extraordinary "presidential powers" published on Wednesday that abolished a new electoral reform that excluded police from being present in polling stations.
"We know that they will be CIO (Central Intelligence Organisation, Mugabe's secret police), military and militia (ruling party youth militia) in police uniform," he said.
He described the voters' roll as "a shambles" and said investigations had revealed irregularities where football fields and empty housing lots were used as addresses for fictional voters. - Sapa-dpa
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