Zimbabwe: chaos

Chaos reigns in Zimbabwe, after opposition party MDC called for an extension of the election process, which was granted by the high court but resisted by Mugabe.

There are reports that some polling stations are open on Zimbabwe’s third day of voting, after the Movement for Democratic Change complained that during the first two days, government employees at polling stations had been purposefully performing a go-slow, processing in some polling stations only 5 people per hour. The total number of polling stations in Harare was reduced from 249 to 167, meaning that more people had to be processed at each one. Those suppressed were mainly in areas controlled by the MDC.

During the weekend vote, ZANU-PF supporters (Mugabe’s party) were allow to vote in stations where they had not been registered, while thousands of MDC supporters found that their names had been deleted from the electoral register.

The resulting confusion was an enormous backlog of voters, amounting to some 30% of the electorate, mainly in areas which support the MDC.

On Monday afternoon, four US diplomats were seized and arrested by Mugabe’s police and taken to an undisclosed destination, while Adrian de Bourbon, a lawyer for the MDC, was arrested along with his wife for distributing food and drinks to the long lines of voters.

Opinion polls gave an 8-point advantage to the leader of the opposition, Morgan Tsvangirai.

Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY PRAVDA.Ru