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Observers rebut Mugabe poll spin

"There was a lot of intimidation for people to vote. You can tell people just wanted to get the indelible ink to protect themselves." — Marwick Khumalo, head of the Pan-African observer mission

Many Zimbabweans deliberately defaced their ballots in a discredited presidential runoff with Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe as the sole candidate and voted only out of fear, the Pan-African Parliament observer mission said yesterday.

Contrary to the state-run newspaper’s report of a “massive turnout” in Friday’s election, Marwick Khumalo, head of the observer mission, said the turnout was “very, very low.”

He also said many of those who did vote cast their ballots for opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

Boycotting the poll and spoiling their votes were brave acts following the intense violence the opposition faced in the run up to the election.

Residents said they were forced to vote by threats of violence or arson from Mugabe supporters who searched for anyone without an ink-stained finger — the telltale sign that they had cast a ballot.

“There was a lot of intimidation for people to vote,” said Khumalo, a lawmaker from Swaziland. “You can tell people just wanted to get the indelible ink to protect themselves from the hooligans.”

Khumalo said he saw many ballot papers that had been defaced, some with slogans such as “We will not vote.”

The state-run Herald newspaper, reported yesterday that a massive voter turnout was “a slap in the face for detractors who claimed this was a ‘Mugabe election’ that did not have the blessing of the generality of Zimbabweans.”

Ballot counting continued through the night and electoral officials collated results yesterday. It is not clear when results will be released. Earliest announcements could be expected yesterday, followed by a final tally today.

Khumalo said the election had been “marred” by a high number of spoiled ballots.

Khumalo said that at one voting station in rural Matabeleland, 36 votes were cast for Mugabe, 17 for Tsvangirai and 31 were spoiled.

The UN Security Council agreed unanimously on Friday “that the conditions for free and fair elections did not exist and it was a matter of deep regret that elections went ahead,” said US Ambassador to the UN Zalmay Khalilzad, who is the current council president.
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