Back to Index

This article participates on the following special index pages:

Hundreds protest Mugabe's victory in Zimbabwe's election
Michaels Wines, New York Times
April 04, 2005

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/04/international/africa/04cnd-zimbabwe.html

JOHANNESBURG - Hundreds of supporters of Zimbabwe's political opposition marched in Harare today to protest what they called the fraudulent victory of President Robert G. Mugabe's ruling party in Thursday's parliamentary elections.

There were conflicting reports on whether the police broke up the protest - a promise Mr. Mugabe made for dealing with demonstrations - or whether the marchers fled before they could be arrested. An official of the opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, said that the police arrested 5 to 10 protesters, a number that could not be confirmed.

The march was the largest of a handful of sporadic protests that have erupted since Mr. Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Unity-Political Front, or ZANU-PF, swept the legislative elections. The opposition, known by its initials M.D.C., claims the victory is invalid,

Spokesmen for the M.D.C. said in telephone interviews that today's street march was organized by young members of the party and not officially sanctioned.

Nevertheless, "I am told the demonstrations will continue," said William Bango, the spokesman for the M.D.C.'s president, Morgan Tsvangirai,cq in an interview this evening.

The M.D.C., which won 57 seats in the last national legislative elections in 2000, won just 41 this time, and the rival ZANU-PF racked up a two-thirds majority in the parliament, giving it virtually absolute power.

The question of whether to urge national demonstrations against the outcome of the election is a difficult one for the opposition. African observers who are generally friendly to Mr. Mugabe's autocratic regime have called Thursday's vote free and fair. The United States and many western governments, however, have joined the M.D.C. in declaring the vote rigged.

The last time Mr. Tsvangirai called for major antigovernment protests, in 2002, the demonstrations fizzled, and he was charged with treason. This time, Mr. Mugabe has promised to use the police or his own party's supporters to crush any protests,, and it is not clear whether Zimbabweans, who depends on the government for food and other basics, would risk their stipends for the sake of making a political statement.

Mr. Bango said that Mr. Tsvangirai has ruled out trying to dispute the election in court, because legal challenges of past elections have proven fruitless. He has decided also against allowing defeated candidates in individual races to contest their losses in court.

But all other options, including organizing mass protests against Mr. Mugabe's regime, remain on the table, Mr. Tsvangirai has said.

"What he's saying is this result has to be challenged through political means," Mr. Bango said. "The party is therefore pursuing a range of political alternatives. He does not rule out alternatives like demonstrations and mass protests. He doesn't rule that out at all."

Mr. Tsvangirai argues that the opposition would have won at least 90 seats, not 41, had Thursday's election been run fairly. But four days after its loss, the M.D.C. has yet to produce detailed evidence to back up its argument that the election was stolen. Indeed, some M.D.C. officials said before the vote that the opposition had put safeguards in place that would make widespread fraud all but impossible.

Today, an M.D.C. legislator who is an attorney from Bulawayo, David Coltart, said that the party was preparing a report on election fraud. He said it would document "major disparities" in the vote, including an unexplained 244,000-vote increase in the reported turnout, hours after the official vote had been announced.

Election analysts also have noted that in a number of districts where Mr. Mugabe's candidates won narrowly, the number of people who tried to vote but were turned away on technical grounds exceeded the margin of the opposition candidates' defeat.

While the M.D.C. plans no general legal challenge to the election's validity, Mr. Coltart said, the party may consider contesting as many as 10 individual races, mostly to document the abuses it says occurred.

Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.

TOP