New Signs of Mugabe Crackdown in Zimbabwe

Police officers patrolled Thursday in Harare, which has been tense since before elections on Saturday. Results of the presidential race have not been released.
Zimbabwe: April 3rd. (NY Times) - With the government facing election results that threaten its 28-year reign, security officers raided the Miekles Hotel in central Harare on Thursday afternoon, searching rooms that the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, had rented for election operations, said Tendai Biti, the party’s general secretary. About the same time, a second group of riot officers sealed off the York Lodge, a small hotel in suburban Harare that is frequented by foreign journalists. A lodge worker who refused to be identified for safety reasons said six people were detained, including Barry Bearak, a correspondent for The New York Times who was later located in a Harare jail. The identities of the others were not clear. Leaders of the Movement for Democratic Change said the raids heralded a campaign of political repression to safeguard President Robert Mugabe, one of Africa’s longest-serving leaders. His party, known as ZANU-PF, has already lost control of the lower house of Parliament, according to official results from Saturday’s elections, a huge turnabout in a nation where Mr. Mugabe has long controlled virtually all levers of power. But the government has still not released a tally of the presidential race, prompting international criticism of the delay and concern that attempts were under way to manipulate the count. The government has said the count has been slow because the election was the first one for all national offices at once.

The opposition says that tallies posted at each polling place show that its candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, won 50.3 percent of the vote, barely enough to gain the majority needed to avert a runoff election against Mr. Mugabe. But the outcome is far less certain. One independent projection of polling data estimated that Mr. Tsvangirai was well in the lead, but that a runoff would still be necessary. Before the election, Mr. Mugabe repeatedly said that he would not allow the opposition to take power, and since then his aides have said that Mr. Mugabe “is going to fight to the last. He’s not giving up; he’s not going anywhere,” Bright Matonga, the government’s deputy information minister, told the British Broadcasting Corporation. “He hasn’t lost the election.” Zimbabwe has been tense, and police officers have been deployed in force since before the elections. But except for the raids and detentions, it was generally quiet in Harare, the capital, and Bulawayo, the country’s second largest city, according to observers there. Still, Mr. Tsvangirai canceled a news conference on Thursday. A witness described an intimidating display of force outside the York Lodge, the hotel where Mr. Bearak and others were detained. Around 5 p.m., two pickup trucks with 10 to 15 armed riot police officers stationed themselves outside the hotel. Soon after, reinforcements came, blocking off the hotel and searching it room by room, confiscating laptop computers, notebooks and cellphones. The raid was overseen by high-ranking police officials, said another witness who refused to be named. “I can confirm that we have arrested two reporters at York Lodge for practicing without accreditation,” a police spokesman, Wayne Bvudzijena, told The New Zealand Times.

Bill Keller, the executive editor of The New York Times, said that Mr. Bearak “was apparently one of a number of Americans and other foreign nationals rounded up today. An American consular official who visited him at the central police station reported that he was being held for ‘violation of the journalism laws.’ We are making every effort to assure that he is well treated, and to secure his prompt release.” Separately, police officers also detained an American worker for a Washington-based pro-democracy group, the National Democratic Institute. The institute said in a written statement that the American, Dileepan Sivapathasundaram, was detained at the Harare airport as he was about to leave the country. His whereabouts were unclear. Mr. Biti, the general secretary of the Movement for Democratic Change, described the raids as an attempt by Mr. Mugabe to overturn an election that the opposition says it won. “What he’s essentially doing is a coup d’état,” Mr. Biti said. “He’s lost the election, so he’s carrying out a coup.”

Mr. Mugabe, who has led Zimbabwe for all but a few months of its history, is widely judged a hero of the nation’s struggle against white rule. He has become deeply unpopular, though, as the economy has imploded and dissent has been stifled. In recent years, all but a handful of weekly newspapers have come under government control, and virtually all meetings require government approval. The annual inflation rate exceeds 100,000 percent. Mr. Mugabe blames a Western plot to overthrow him and re-establish colonial rule for the nation’s ills. Zimbabwe prohibits foreign journalists from reporting there without government approval, which is rarely granted. In recent years, Western journalists lacking accreditation have routinely entered the nation openly, although quietly, to chronicle political and economic problems there. “It is imperative that all journalists, foreign and domestic, be allowed to freely cover the important political situation unfolding in Zimbabwe,” said Joel Simon of the Committee to Protect Journalists, adding that the authorities there should “stop intimidating all journalists.”

On Thursday Mr. Tsvangirai had intended to mollify security chiefs who had previously sworn not to follow anyone but Mr. Mugabe, The Associated Press reported Thursday. But a meeting with seven generals was called off because the officers said they would be under surveillance, according to the report. A deal that Mr. Tsvangirai proposed to the generals promised generous retirement packages, as well as pledges not to take back some of the farms that had been doled out to officers under Mr. Mugabe’s land seizures of years past, The A.P. said. The report appeared to correspond with earlier accounts from political analysts that the opposition was in discussions with government officials about the possibility of a transfer of power.
by Michael Wines
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Irish Premier to Step Down

Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern announced his resignation in Dublin on Wednesday.
DUBLIN, Ireland: April 3rd. (NY Times) — Prime Minister bertie Ahern of ireland, one of Europe’s longest-serving leaders, who was closely involved in the negotiations that brought peace to Northern Ireland, announced Wednesday that he would resign next month. He denied accusations of corruption in the 1990s, when he was finance minister, but said he was quitting to prevent his government’s work from being “constantly deflected by the minutiae of my life, my lifestyle and my finances.” He forecast that a tribunal investigating payments received by Irish politicians would find that he had not acted improperly. In emotional tones at a hastily convened news conference here, Mr. Ahern, 56, said he would quit on May 6. A week before that, he is to address both houses of Congress in Washington.

The announcement Wednesday sealed a reversal of fortunes for a man once nicknamed the Teflon Taoiseach — the Irish word for leader or prime minister — for his ability to survive onslaughts by political foes. During Mr. Ahern’s 11 years in office, Ireland’s economy has undergone a transformation to become one of the most robust in Europe, though more recently, economic growth has slowed. His planned resignation raised questions about the future of his coalition government and about his ambitions. Supporters hint at his possibly becoming the first permanent president of the European Union, a new role being proposed for the 27-nation bloc. “Ahern likes Europe,” said Sean Donnelly, a leading pollster who has worked for Mr. Ahern. “He is not just going to walk away from politics.” Other analysts, however, said Mr. Ahern’s prospects would depend on the outcome of the tribunal investigating accusations that Irish politicians received payments from real estate developers in return for favorable planning decisions. It is called the Mahon Tribunal after Alan Mahon, a judge who leads it. “I want everyone to understand one truth above all else,” Mr. Ahern said Wednesday. “Never, in all the time I have served in public office, have I put my personal interest ahead of the public good.” He went on: “While I will be the first to admit that I have made mistakes in my life and my career, one mistake I have never made is to enrich myself by misusing the trust of the people. I have never received a corrupt payment, and I have never done anything to dishonor any office I have held.”

The leader of the centrist Fianna Fail party, Mr. Ahern was re-elected last June for a third term in office, which was to last until 2012. At that time, he said he would not serve the full term. At the news conference, Mr. Ahern said of the accusations against him, “All of these issues arose in a period when my family, personal and professional situations were rapidly changing, and I made the best decisions I could in the circumstances in which I found myself.” He continued, “I know in my heart of hearts that I have done no wrong and wronged no one.” Despite opposition calls for an election, Mr. Ahern’s most likely successor is the deputy prime minister, Brian Cowen, who is also expected to assume the leadership of the Fianna Fail party.
Eamon Quinn reported from Dublin and Alan Cowell from London.
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Mugabe Loses Parliament in Zimbabwe

A man repairing a bicycle tire sat next to torn posters of President Robert G. Mugabe in Harare, Zimbabwe on Wednesday. (Desmond Kwande/Agence France-Presse)

HARARE, Zimbabwe: Ap. 3rd. (NY Times) — President Robert Mugabe and his ruling party have lost control of the nation’s Parliament, election returns showed on Wednesday, giving new impetus to the bigger question: Does that foretell a loss of the presidency itself, the job he has held tightly for the past 28 years? As this nation waited in frustration a fourth day without official results in its presidential race, the main opposition party of Morgan Tsvangirai announced its own final tally, proclaiming victory with 50.3 percent of the vote to Mr. Mugabe’s 43.8 percent — just barely enough to avoid a runoff. Zimbabwe now waits to see if the official count matches the opposition’s, knowing it would not require a very heavy thumb on the scale to force another round of voting three weeks from now. There were signs that Mr. Mugabe has endorsed a second vote, which, while not as humiliating as an outright defeat, would still seem a difficult pill for a man who has held power for 28 years and considers himself the father of the nation. Wednesday morning’s edition of The Herald, the state-run newspaper, reported that “the pattern of results” shows that no candidates “will garner more than 50 percent of the vote, forcing a re-run.”

The newspaper, considered a mouthpiece for Mr. Mugabe, published no actual election totals from Saturday’s vote and attributed its conclusion to analysts. But it likely means that ruling party insiders have urged the president not to give up his — and their — power, either convincing Mr. Mugabe to keep on fighting or at least to maintain the option. Even so, the election commission confirmed Wednesday that the balance of power had fatefully shifted in Parliament, long a bastion of support for Mr. Mugabe. With only 11 races to be declared, the Movement for Democratic Change, the opposition party, had 106 seats in all, including one for an allied independent, in the 210-seat assembly. Mr. Mugabe’s party — known as ZANU-PF — had only 93 seats and among its losing candidates were seven of the president’s cabinet ministers.

But the presidency remains another matter. A businessman with close connections to the party hierarchy, speaking only on condition of anonymity, said the president had met Tuesday evening first with the chiefs of military and intelligence and then with key members of his cabinet and the party presidium. “They urged him to go to the bush,” the businessman said, meaning that in a runoff the party would employ tactics of intimidation and bloodshed that had worked well in earlier campaigns, especially in rural areas that can be closed off to opposition candidates. President Mugabe was said to hesitate. He is a once-lauded liberator and statesman who became a ruthless autocrat to be forever remembered for murderous campaigns against his enemies and an ill-conceived takeover of white-owned farmland that ended up wrecking the economy. He feels a strong sense of rejection in the election results and a part of him wants to concede, the businessman said. Still, Mr. Mugabe was urged to continue. If a runoff occurs, the opposition is ready, said the party’s secretary general Tendai Biti at the press conference where he released the results. “We’ll accept with protest, but it is only a delay of the inevitable.” He predicted the president would lose the rerun by “an embarrassing margin” and suggested that Mr. Mugabe withdraw with grace. Mr. Biti also demanded that the election commission finish its count in the presidential election, implying that something fishy was in the works. “There is a vacuum, and in a vacuum all sorts of mischief fills in,” he said. “Harare is bubbling with conspiracies and counter-conspiracies.” Mr. Biti said the election commission’s tallies for Parliament by and large coincided with his party’s, as they are both working off numbers that were posted at each polling station. The exception, he said, were discrepancies in the province of Mashonaland Central.

The delay in publishing the presidential results has brought international criticism. In Romania, where President Bush is attending a meeting of NATO leaders, a White House spokesman said Wednesday that the administration supported calls for Mr. Mugabe to accept the results of the election, suggesting that he should step aside, though stopping short of calling on him to do so. "It’s clear the people of Zimbabwe have voted for change," said the spokesman, Gordon D. Johndroe. The mood among the opposition is buoyant. The results showed that it had won several seats in rural areas where President Mugabe had previously been enormously popular. Patrick Chitaka won a Senate seat for the first time in rural Nyanga-Mutasa in Manicaland province. “We’ll wipe Mugabe out,” he said at the prospect of a presidential runoff. “People are tired of being poor, and now that they know the bully can be thrashed they’ll come out in greater numbers than before. Even the oldest people with canes will come. “In 2000 and 2002, Mugabe had taken land from white people and could dangle that issue,” he added. “But now we have seen that he has not only destroyed commercial agriculture but subsistence farming. The only people who profited were bigwigs who looted.”

But a runoff, if it comes to that, would also create difficulties for the opposition. Civic groups and Mr. Tsvangirai’s party both deployed thousands of election observers around the country, guarding against chicanery at the polls and making sure that the votes were counted openly and the tallies posted in public view. It may be hard to recreate that effort, especially in an economically devastated nation where a huge deployment requires the use of scarce gasoline and a problematic mobile phone system. Then, too, the run-up to Saturday’s election was relatively free of the violence that characterized so many earlier campaigns. With his back to the wall, and with the support of military and police leaders, Mr. Mugabe might well unleash his desperation as rage, many here worried. “A lot of areas that traditionally voted for Mugabe this time went for Tsvangirai, and there will be recriminations against those people,” said Useni Sibanda, the national coordinator for the Zimbabwe Christian Alliance. If a runoff is set, the alliance plans to send delegations this week to South Africa, Zambia and Tanzania to ask the presidents of those countries to implore Mr. Mugabe to resign — or at the very least to send observers to monitor the election, Mr. Sibanda said.
By Barry Bearak with Steven Lee Myers reporting from Bucharest, Romania.
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Zimbabwe Opposition Says It Has Beaten Mugabe

A crowd celebrating in Harare, Zimbabwe, on Sunday after unofficial results suggested a landslide victory by the opposition. (Alexander Joe/Agence France-Presse)

HARARE, Zimbabwe: Mar. 31st. (NY Times) — Zimbabwe’s main opposition party said Sunday that it had won a landslide victory, insisting that unofficial election results showed that the Movement for Democratic Change had unseated President Robert Mugabe, the man who has led this nation for 28 years. Those results had been compiled by adding the vote counts posted at thousands of individual polling stations, and were not formally released by the government. Indeed, the nation’s chief election officer warned that the opposition’s boasts were premature and asked people to wait for official totals. People did just that, anxiously watching the government television station on Sunday for announcements about the election the day before. But instead of news they were shown irrelevant fare like a program about biodegradable Chinese plastic and a documentary about the Netherlands’ 1974 soccer team. Near midnight, the election commissioner, George Chiweshe, finally announced that the official results would begin coming out at 6 a.m. Monday. At the appointed hour no results were forthcoming. “It is of absolute necessity that at each stage the result be meticulously analyzed, witnessed and confirmed,” he said. Soon after the designated time, an election official began laboriously reading results, but only of six parliamentary races.

In the meantime, Zimbabwe’s future has seemed to rest in a state of suspended animation, with people awaiting the first official results, wondering if the numbers were being carefully tabulated or craftily concocted. “We’ve won this election,” declared Tendai Biti, the M.D.C.’s general secretary, in something like a pre-emptive strike. “The trend is irreversible.” “The results coming in show that in our traditional strongholds, we are massacring them,” he said. “In Mugabe’s traditional strongholds, they are doing very badly. There is no way Mugabe can claim victory except through fraud. He has lost this election.” If Mr. Mugabe, 84, is defeated, it may mean a new chance for a once prosperous country that now has one of the world’s sorriest economies. It would surely be a signal event for Africa itself, with another of its enduring autocrats beaten against long odds by the will of the electorate. The M.D.C.’s presidential candidate is Morgan Tsvangirai, a former labor leader. In 2002, the early count also showed him well ahead of Mr. Mugabe. Then the broadcast of results suddenly stopped. When they resumed, hours later, the president had thundered ahead based on late returns. Outcries about fraud were among the reasons for rule changes this time. It was agreed that results would be counted at each polling station and then publicly posted to prevent any trickery with the numbers.

Late Saturday, many of those posted numbers began traveling across the country as text messages on cellphones, passed along not just between party activists but between journalists and independent election watchdogs. “It’s a tsunami for M.D.C.,” was a phrase frequently repeated. The party had not only swept most of the big cities like Harare and Bulawayo, where it was previously strong, the opposition said, but it had also won in Masvingo and Bindura and dozens of places it had never won before. Seven of Mr. Mugabe’s cabinet members were defeated in races for Parliament, according to reports phoned in by journalists. It appeared that Mr. Mugabe was being thoroughly repudiated.

The Zimbabwe Election Support Network, an independent civic group, employed an elaborate plan to gather the posted returns. By Sunday afternoon, Noel Kututwa, its chief, said the organization had collected 88 percent of the urban vote and 40 percent of the rural vote. He criticized the government for not releasing the totals sooner. “The delay in announcing the votes has fueled the speculation that something is going on,” he said. Mr. Kututwa refused to say which candidate was winning in the results he had in hand. But another independent observer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Mr. Mugabe was well behind with 37 percent of the vote compared with 58 percent for Mr. Tsvangirai and 5 percent for the independent candidate Simba Makoni. Still, even by the support network’s math, there were a lot of polling stations whose vote totals were unknown, including many in the rural areas of Mashonaland where the president has always reaped sizable margins. Even while declaring victory, Mr. Biti of the M.D.C. worried aloud about a reversal of fortune. “In some areas where we thought the results were final, some ballot boxes are actually missing,” he said.

There were other worrisome signs. Prior to the election, Zimbabwe’s security chiefs each said they would support no one but Mr. Mugabe, a hero of the country’s struggle against colonialism. In a joint announcement, they also warned opposition candidates from making victory proclamations based on unofficial totals and “thereby fomenting disorder and mayhem.” Helmeted riot police patrolled many of Harare’s streets late Sunday. Come Monday, the followers of one candidate or the other were expected to feel deeply aggrieved. President Mugabe has cast the opposition as puppets of Zimbabwe’s colonial masters, the British. If he loses, some will feel their national sovereignty has been put at risk. On the other hand, if Mr. Mugabe wins, the M.D.C. will undoubtedly allege that the vote was stolen. Mr. Mugabe has presided over an economic freefall that began in 2000 when the government seized agricultural land owned by whites. About a quarter of Zimbabwe’s 13 million people have fled the country; 80 percent to 90 percent of those left are unemployed. The inflation rate is more than 100,000 percent. But Mr. Mugabe’s government controls the news media here and has doled out food and other favors that critics see as attempts to buy votes. And the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, a body dominated by Mr. Mugabe’s appointees, has been commonly accused by the M.D.C. of rigging elections.

Still, there was hope here that this election might be more transparent than the last. Last March, Mr. Tsvangirai was badly beaten by the police at a prayer rally, but he has campaigned largely without interference, speaking to huge crowds. The posting of results by precinct has contributed to the optimism. “The key has always been to get the results posted at the polling stations,” said Mike Davies, a longtime community activist with the Combined Harare Residents Association. “If the results are posted, it becomes so much harder for Mugabe to cheat.” But he too was cautious. “It’s hard for me to believe that Mugabe will go peacefully,” he said. “When autocrats fall, that’s the most dangerous time.”
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Disclaimer
No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to either myself or to the blogspot ‘Mozlink’ for any or all of the articles/images placed here. The placing of an article does not necessarily imply that I agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.
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