Honest Voting

Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the Zimbabwean opposition party Movement for Democratic Change, announced on Sunday that the party will pull out of the country’s runoff elections because of violence and arrests targeting his party and its supporters.

CNN reports that the United States and Britain want a special U.N. Security Council meeting to address the situation in Zimbabwe.

According to CNN, Patrick Chinamasa, Zimbabwe’s justice minister, denied the MDC’s allegations of intimidation and said Tsvangirai was dropping out to avoid “a humiliating defeat.”

In the MDC’s official statement on the presidential runoff, Tsvangirai described what he called “an elaborate and decisive plan by Zanu PF to rig the elections through the following measures”:

i. Commandeering the uniformed forces to use the postal ballot and forcing them to vote in front of their superiors.

ii. The prevention of MDC election agents to get to the polling stations through roadblocks and arrests.

iii. The three Mashonaland provinces have been identified as rigging centres where ballots are going to be stuffed.

iv. Villagers are having their national identity cards confiscated denying them their right to vote.

v. There is a plan to record the serial numbers of ballot papers so as to intimidate voters.

vi. The holding of forced pungwes (overnight meetings) where MDC supporters are beaten and forced to undergo “re-education”.

vii. The abuse of traditional leaders.

viii. The use of massive violence as a weapon to influence the ballot.

The Zimbabwean government plans to go ahead with the coming election even without the participation of the MDC.

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