Zim prints extra 3m ballot papers
23/03/2008 13:20  - (SA)  

Tsvangirai threatens to quit poll Zim polls: 300 000 more register Rural voters favoured in Zim Zim to use clear ballot boxes Zim cops 'ready to shoot to quell' 'There is no dictator in Zim'

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Harare - The opposition on Sunday accused Zimbabwe's authorities of printing millions of surplus ballot papers, raising the risk of vote-rigging in next week's presidential and legislative elections.

Tendai Biti, secretary-general of the Movement for Democratic Change, said leaked documents from the government's security printers showed nine million ballot papers were ordered for the 5.9 million people registered to vote on Saturday.

Correspondence supplied from Fidelity Printers, producers of the nation's bank notes, also showed 600 000 postal ballot papers were requisitioned for a few thousand soldiers, police and civil servants away from their home districts and for diplomats and their families abroad, he said.

"We are extremely worried about the extra ballot papers," he said.

Mugabe 'already has victory in the bag'

At least four million Zimbabweans living abroad, mostly fugitives from the nation's economic meltdown and political exiles, were not permitted to vote by mail - itself a subject of dispute between the government and its opponents.

Biti said there were fears President Robert Mugabe, the 84-year-old ruler since independence from Britain in 1980, already had victory "in the bag".

"The credibility gap will be so huge. If he steals the election he will get a temporary reprieve but that will guarantee him a dishonourable if not bloody exit.

"Either way he's in a no-win situation" and will likely be forced out of office in coming weeks by the deepening economic crisis and shortage of basic public services, Biti said.

Opposition groups had also protested over last-minute changes to voting procedures allowing police a supervisory role inside polling stations.

Electoral laws 'abused'

The independent Zimbabwe Election Support Network said the police presence intimidated voters and it was investigating proposed alterations to vote-counting and verification arrangements at polling stations.

The head of the Electoral Commission, Judge George Chiweshe, had not yet responded to the opposition allegations.

Biti, a parliamentarian and senior attorney, said existing electoral laws were being abused and African monitors had done little to reassure Mugabe's opponents that accepted voting procedures were not being encroached upon by the state.

Western nations had been barred from sending observer delegations by Mugabe.

In campaigning so far, opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, 55, and former finance minister and ruling party loyalist Simba Makoni, 57, reported a groundswell of opinion blaming Mugabe for the acute shortages of food, gasoline and most goods and the world's highest official inflation rate of 100 500%.

Women at a meeting on Saturday of the Feminist Political Education Project reported a 4 000% increase in the price of life-giving HIV/Aids drugs from Z$30m in January to Z$1.3bn (about US$40 or 26 at the dominant black market exchange rate) for a month's course of medication.

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