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3 million surplus ballot papers raise fears of vote rigging, says Zimbabwe opposition
Associated Press
March 23, 2008

http://www.taiwannews.com.tw/etn/news_content.php?id=627508&lang=eng_news

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 9 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.

At least 4 million Zimbabweans living abroad, mostly fugitives from the nation's economic meltdown and political exiles, are 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 dishonorable 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 have also protested over last-minute changes to voting procedures allowing police a supervisory role inside polling stations.

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, has not yet responded to the opposition allegations.

Biti, a lawmaker 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 have 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 percent.

Women at a meeting Saturday of the Feminist Political Education Project reported a 4,000-percent increase in the price of life-giving HIV/AIDS drugs from 30 million Zimbabwe dollars in January to 1.3 billion Zimbabwe dollars (about US$40 or EURO 26 at the dominant black market exchange rate) for a month's course of medication.

More than 20 percent of adults -- about 2 million people -- in Zimbabwe are estimated to be infected with the virus that causes AIDS, one of the highest infection rates in the world. About 50,000 people receive free or state-subsidized anti-retroviral drugs.

Those who abruptly stop their medication are likely to die within six months and even if treatment is resumed later it is unlikely to be effective, doctors say.

At least 80 percent of the population lives below the poverty line of US$1 (65 euro cents) a day.

"This election is about survival. For women, it's about empty stomachs and health and education that we are not getting for our families," said Elizabeth Chaibvu, a member of the women's project.

The often-violent seizures of thousands of white-owned commercial farms ordered by Mugabe in 2000 disrupted the once-thriving agriculture-based economy, causing seven years of economic and political turmoil and violence.

Everjoice Win, a leading women's activist, said the nation's mothers, and women generally, demanded "a process of healing" from the elections.

"Somebody has to be held to account, even if they don't go to The Hague," the international human rights court, she said.

"We need a platform to talk about what has happened to us, particularly those women who have ended up infected by HIV as a result of the violence that has been meted out," Win said.

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