Mugabe tightens election grip

Zimbabweans vote tomorrow in an election expected to produce a "mountainous victory" for the party of President Robert Mugabe, who is suspected of rigging the polls to obtain the results he needs to stay in power.

As he predicted victory at a final rally campaign, the president said: "We have never been losers, because we have always been a party of the people."

As a last-minute perk to ensure electoral success, he announced that the minimum wage for domestic servants would increase tenfold. The main opposition party, the MDC (Movement for Democratic Change), said the sudden announcement would punish middle class urban voters who employ most of Zimbabwe's 250,000 domestic servants, while trade unions warned that it could raise unemployment.

Tendai Biti, secretary of finance for the MDC said: "They (the government) want to drive a wedge between urban employers and employees who are presumed to be MDC."

He pointed out that Mugabe had not made any similar provisions for the 500,000 farm workers who had lost their jobs when Mugabe seized land from white farmers as part of his land reform policy.

Wages in Zimbabwe have risen erratically over the past few years, sometimes in line with inflation and sometimes not. Currently, a gardener earns Z83,000 ($12 ) a month and under the new minimum wage, he will earn Z800000 ($113), in a country where a loaf of bread has risen from Z300, to Z3,000.

The move is one of the more legitimate moves Mugabe has made in this election campaign.

He has been accused of withholding food from opposition supporters, intimidating MDC party workers and censoring the press. Over three million Zimbabweans living outside the country have been barred from voting, but thousands of fictional names have been added to electoral rolls throughout the country.

The allocation of seats is already skewed against the opposition MDC; under the terms of Zimbabwe's constitution, voters will elect 120 members of Zimbabwe's 150-seat Parliament, and Mugabe will select the remaining 30 himself.

In order to win an outright majority in parliament, the MDC needs to obtain at least 76 seats, while Zanu PF need only win 46. Any party that wins a two-thirds majority in parliament can then alter the constitution.

Earlier this year, the government passed an electoral law that allows the military and security services to act as election officials, manning the polling station and supervising the vote count.

"Can you imagine how a voter is going to feel, walking into a polling station and seeing the army and police standing at the door," asked Shari Eppel, a human rights worker for Zimbabwe-based Solidarity Peace Trust.

"It does nothing to convince people this election will be free and fair."

In the last general election in 2000, the MDC managed to win 57 seats in parliament, despite the fact that opposition supporters were routinely arrested, beaten up and tortured by Mugabe's youth militias.

This time around, the MDC still enjoys wide support in the country, but Mugabe's critics believe he has managed to rig the election more effectively, and even optimists believe the MDC cannot win more than 60 seats. Most people believe the opposition will return between 30 and 40 candidates.

Andrew Moyse, head of a media monitoring service in Harare, said the only real question was just how many seats Zanu PF would decide they wanted. "Are they going to rig it to the point where they give themselves a two-thirds majority? Will they allow the MDC to keep most of the seats that they win?" he asked.

Even in the unlikely event of a hung parliament or an MDC majority, Mugabe has retained the right to override parliament and rule by presidential decree.

The MDC has urged supporters to go out and vote, arguing that the government has less chance of rigging the election under the gaze of thousands of voters. Even the monitoring of the poll has been skewed, as the select group of international election observers are all hand-picked by Mugabe.

The European Union and the United States have been banned from sending monitors to judge whether the election will be free and fair. Mugabe has said Western powers are hostile to his government and will prejudge the election.

Instead, African groups all sympathetic to Mugabe's regime have been allowed into the country.

Three of the main ones are controlled by South Africa's ruling party, the African National Congress, and a fourth comes from Southern African Development Community. The African Union has also sent observers.

South Africa's president Thabo Mbeki has already said he expects that the elections in Zimbabwe will be free and fair, despite evidence to the contrary.

Mugabe generates huge popular support among South Africans who admire his decision to take land away from white farmers and distribute it among the black population, and Mbeki is reluctant to undermine that popularity.

The EU has already expressed its mistrust of the elections. Luxemburg, which holds the presidency of the EU, called the polls a "sham election." Junior Foreign Minister Nicolas Schmit said: We're worried and shocked, not only by this pseudo-election campaign but by what's been going on there for years."

- Independent