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Index of results, reports, press stmts and articles on March 31 2005 General Election - post Mar 30
Zimbabwean
opposition criticizes electoral commission "cover-up''
Deutsche
Presse Agentur (DPA)
April 08,
2005
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/EVIU-6B9EUM?OpenDocument&rc=1&cc=zwe
Harare - Zimbabwe's
pro-democracy opposition Friday dismissed as a "cover-up'' the explanation
offered by the country's election boss of discrepancies in voting figures.
On Thursday, chairman
of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission and high court judge George Chiweshe
denied accusations that the organization had ``fiddled the results'' of
parliamentary elections on March 31.
He said the only figures
that were relevant were the final results after the count that went on
for nearly three days. ``The question of inconsistencies does not arise,''
he said.
The organization gave
President Robert Mugabe's ruling ZANU(PF) party 78 out of 120 contested
seats, 41 to the opposition Movement for Democratic Change and one to
an independent.
Mugabe appoints another
30 members of parliament through a controversial constitutional dispensation.
United Nations Secretary-General
Kofi Annan, the United States, Britain and Australia have condemned the
election for being neither free nor fair, while Zimbabwe's neighbours
have declared them ``a legitimate reflection of the will of the people''.
The MDC on Wednesday
handed to the commission a report which asserts that ``massive rigging
took place in the vote''.
The report was backed
by videotapes of official election announcements last week, showing differences
of up to 16,000 between the final number of votes cast after polls closed
and the combined totals of the ballots for each candidate after the count.
The electoral commission
announced final numbers of votes cast in 72 constituencies, then abruptly
stopped. In 30 of these constituencies, MDC reports said, there were discrepancies,
all of them where ZANU(PF) was declared the winner.
One of the first results,
in Manyame constituency just west of Harare, gave Mugabe's nephew Patrick
Zhuwao 15,000 votes against the MDC candidate's 8,000 votes. However,
the commission had announced earlier that a total of only 13,000 ballots
had been cast.
On Wednesday, the
U.S. reported that its 35 observer teams had seen police and ruling-party
election agents take over the counting process, police communicating results
over police radios to the electoral commission and destroying notes on
their conduct as well as driving away opposition agents.
Mugabe (81) and his
ruling ZANU(PF) party have ruled Zimbabwe since independence in 1980.
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