Mostly peaceful, but hardly fair

Apr 4th 2005
From The Economist Global Agenda

Robert Mugabe’s ruling party, ZANU-PF, has won a two-thirds majority in Zimbabwe's parliamentary elections, allowing the president to fiddle with the constitution. With Mr Mugabe's lot tightening their grip on power, there is no end in sight to the hunger and disease gripping the country

FIRST the good news: the parliamentary elections held in Zimbabwe on Thursday March 31st were mostly peaceful. However, they were neither free nor fair and are unlikely to bring much change to the troubled southern African country. President Robert Mugabe’s ruling party, ZANU-PF, did well in the rural areas, especially in the north. Surprisingly, it also picked up a seat in the capital, Harare. The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) again collected most seats in urban areas. Of the 120 contested single-member constituencies up for grabs, ZANU won 78, with 41 going to the MDC and one to an independent. But long before the final results were declared, it was clear who would control parliament. Mr Mugabe gets to nominate an extra 30 (unelected) parliamentarians for his ruling party, so ZANU had enough to run the show once it had sailed past 45 elected seats. Even better for Mr Mugabe, he has realised his ambition to control two-thirds of the parliament, which allows him to alter the constitution to his advantage.

Though the election was far from perfect, there were some marked improvements on previous polls. Compared with the presidential election in 2002 and the last parliamentary one in 2000, there was little violence. (In the 2002 poll, for instance, police beat up opposition voters and blocked people from reaching polling stations.) The MDC campaigned in remote areas where it once was guaranteed violent attack. In constituencies where opposition supporters were murdered last time, things were tense but largely peaceful. Because of extra polling stations, there were none of the excessively long queues so common last time. And with many foreign journalists allowed in the country (a ban is usually enforced), plus some access to local media for the opposition, a case could be made for fairer reporting of events, though most local coverage was still skewed heavily in favour of the ruling party. Zimbabwe’s most prominent independent newspaper, the Daily News, was closed down some time ago.

But huge concerns remained. The voters’ roll was out of date, stuffed with the names of dead people (whose ghosts might be made to cast a ballot for the ruling party by corrupt officials). Perhaps 3m Zimbabweans who fled the country as refugees or economic migrants were told they could not cast postal ballots: out of a total electorate said to be 5.7m people, that is a huge share. Most of these are thought to be opposition supporters. Many of the most effective observer groups were barred from the elections: the European Union, the United States, a Southern African parliamentary group, South Africa’s main trade-union body and several others were told to stay away. And there were repeated and convincing reports that food was used to sway rural voters. Drought and an agricultural system destroyed by Mr Mugabe’s policy of grabbing commercial farms for his cronies mean the country faces an acute shortage of food. Some voters were told that anyone who backed the MDC would get no food aid after the election.

There were also several problems on the day. A local election observer group said more than 100,000 voters were turned away from polling stations because they lacked identification papers. Several foreign journalists were arrested while trying to report on the day’s events, including two Britons who lacked accreditation and could face two years in jail. In the centre of Harare, scores of local women who were praying peacefully for “divine intervention” in the poll were rounded up by police and dragged to the cells. In the countryside ill-educated voters were told that new transparent ballot boxes meant votes were not secret and anyone who backed the MDC would be punished.

The opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, said the MDC had taken part in the election reluctantly as it knew the poll would be neither free nor fair. On Friday, he denounced the vote as fraudulent, claiming that in some constituencies more votes had been ascribed to ZANU than total votes cast. The MDC is now calling for fresh elections, once the constitution has been rewritten to reduce ZANU's influence over electoral institutions.

That prospect is highly unlikely. If the constitution is recast, it will not be to the MDC's liking. Reaching the two-thirds threshold in parliament permits Mr Mugabe to rewrite the document to allow him to retire without triggering a new presidential election. That would make it easier for Mr Mugabe, now 81, to handpick and then impose a successor, probably the new vice-president, Joyce Mujuru, known during the liberation war of the 1970s as Comrade Spill Blood.
As for foreign observers, they have followed a well-beaten path. The United States immediately issued a warning that the election, though more peaceful than the last one, could hardly be considered fair. The European Union was also critical, despite France's eagerness to endorse Mr Mugabe’s win. By contrast, fellow Africans, notably South Africa’s delegation and the regional Southern African Development Community, gave the poll a clean bill of health.

All of which means that Mr Mugabe and his ZANU followers are sure to retain their grip on Zimbabwe, despite several years of economic collapse, hunger, corruption, a spiralling AIDS epidemic, chronic misrule and widespread hatred of the ruling party (which is itself sharply divided). In February, the Johannesburg-based Famine Early Warning System Network estimated that 5.8m Zimbabweans, in a population of around 11.5m, desperately need food aid—or they could starve. While the opposition movement continues its struggle for democracy, most of the population are merely struggling to survive.

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