Zimbabwe poll victory unlikely to end Mugabe's problems

HARARE - President Robert Mugabe is widely expected to win Zimbabwe's parliamentary elections on Thursday but victory is unlikely to end his international isolation or the country's economic crisis.

With the opposition MDC cowed and weakened, most experts believe Mugabe's ZANU-PF party will score a much easier victory than in the last cliffhanger parliamentary elections five years ago and a presidential poll in 2002.

There are 120 assembly seats up for grabs but the ruling party is assured of 30 of them under a series of electoral and other laws which critics say rig the poll in Mugabe's favor.

A calm election, without the severe bloodshed that marred the two previous polls, is crucial for Mugabe in his fight against international isolation and to win back Western aid critical for Zimbabwe's economic recovery.

Shortages of food, fuel and foreign exchange plague many parts of the once-prosperous country.

The campaign has been remarkably peaceful but political analysts say the expected victory will not help Mugabe's international credibility problem.

Human Rights organizations and the opposition have already denounced the poll as rigged and allege the government is using food supplies in the hungry countryside as a weapon to guarantee votes.

CREDIBILITY PROBLEM

"Mugabe's problem is that with or without this election, he has to find a way to convince the world that he is running things in a manner that is accepted by the rest of the world," said political analyst Brian Kagoro of pressure group Crisis Coalition of Zimbabwe. "He has a credibility problem."

The electoral commission says it will run the polls professionally, rejecting charges that Mugabe has already fixed the result. Critics say hundreds of thousands of fictitious or dead people are among the 5.7 million registered voters.

"The commission is professional and would not be interested in rigging any election -- that is not our mandate," chief elections officer Lovemore Sekeremayi said.

More than 3 million Zimbabweans living abroad who could have provided vital votes to the MDC (Movement for Democratic Change) have also been refused a vote.

But whatever the result, Mugabe faces a dilemma.

"He is in a no-win situation," said Heneri Dzinotyiwei of the University of Zimbabwe.

"If ZANU-PF wins with a very big margin, people will say he rigged the elections and if ZANU-PF wins narrowly or is beaten, people will say that he is on his way out," he said.

The once-united ruling part is now split by internal disputes between Mugabe supporters and dissidents and a bad result could aggravate these divisions.

Mugabe has said he will retire at the end of his current six-year presidential term in 2008 after leading Zimbabwe since independence from Britain in 1980. The veteran leader, who denies charges that he rigged the last parliamentary polls and his own re-election in 2002, has reined in ZANU-PF militants blamed for a violent campaign against the MDC in those elections, analysts say.

The MDC concedes that political violence has dropped this year but it says Mugabe's ZANU-PF has nevertheless seized an unfair advantage, using strict security and media laws to curtail opposition campaigning.

It dismisses reforms adopted by Mugabe under regional guidelines on democratic elections as cosmetic.

ZANU-PF, which won 62 of the 120 contested seats in 2000, is pushing for a two-thirds majority in the new parliament which will give it powers to change the constitution and cement its supremacy.

Mugabe, who turned 81 last month, has made attacks on Britain the central plank of his campaign, accusing Prime Minister Tony Blair of mobilising Western support for the MDC because it wants him out of power for seizing white-owned farms for blacks.

Britain denies the charge.

- REUTERS