A friend of mine just sent me the following message from Zimbabwe...
Now it looks like the vile dictator Mugabe has added yet another weapon to his vote-rigging armoury. Not content with driving 25,000 suspected MDC supporters from their homes, beating up a further 3,000 and killing 65 (to date), he's now moving on to the next stage of his "electoral cleansing" campaign: Stealing the postal votes.
It drives me crazy that this man is allowed to get away with stealing an election, while literally starving his own country - as well as destablising an entire region - and there is literally nothing I can do about it from here. Anyway, here is the latest:Through abuse of the electoral laws relating to postal votes, Mugabe looks set to win between 30,000 and 50,000 illegal votes, and potentially may score tens of thousands more.
Only members of the Zimbabwean military (or other parts of the government) and their families are supposed to be eligible to vote. George Chiweshe, head of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC), confirmed that approximately 8,000 applications for postal votes were received in respect of the Harmonised Elections of 29 March 2008 – entailing elections for President, Parliament and local government authorities. In the event, less than half of these applications were approved despite 600,000 postal ballots having been printed.
Now credible reports, including a leaked internal police document entitled “Postal Voting Mechanism” indicate that police and army officers, their spouses and dependents will be required to vote in the run-off by postal ballot and will be compelled to do so under supervision. This is likely to yield Mugabe between 30,000 and 50,000 votes, but may – because of the excessive number of ballots printed for the first round — mean tens of thousands more.
7 comments:
Rigged postal votes, yet another policy that Robert Mugabe's Zanu PF and Gordon Brown's Labour party have in common.
With the addition of detention without charge and Robert Mugabe would feel right at home in the UK. Maybe he could replace David Miliband as Foreign Secretary in the coming reshuffle.
Has he spoken to the DUP yet?
They are always good for a few votes
SAS in through the window, bang bang, one dead dictator. Out again without anybody knowing, bit of political subterfuge about who might have done it. Opposition would win the election in the ensuing chaos, job done.
Of course all these shenanigans are simply storing up resentment and bitterness for the future. Once the power that has been amassed by the ruling clique is on the wane then what happens in Zimbabwe will make Rwanda look like a Sunday afternoon stroll.
And then we will have, once again, the international do gooding community, as exemplified by the UN, wring their hands and propose empty and late solutions.
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
How people still think this election will be free and fair and still want to go ahead with it is beyond more. I think more drastic measures are required in order to depose Mugabe.
We are in no position to point fingers at Zimbabwe now, now that there is the potential for free citizens to disappear into the clutches of the State for six weeks at a time.
Perhaps you don't follow zimbabwesituation.com but here is a copy of an article yesterday regarding postal voting, it seems very organised!
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It hasn't begun - but Mugabe is winning!
Zimbabwe Today
How Mugabe is already ahead in the June 27 poll
Those who fear for the survival of democracy in Zimbabwe will be gratified
to know that Mugabe's Zanu-PF are so keen on the process of one-man,
one-vote, they've started already. Yesterday thousands of police and
associated uniformed thugs voted in the run-off presidential election set
for June 27. And, amazingly, they all voted for Robert Mugabe.
Employing the notoriously unreliable postal voting system, the top cops
lined their men up and gave them strict instructions on how to fill in their
ballot papers. In Bulawayo it was Senior Assistant Commissioner Lee Muchemwa
who addressed the ranks.
"He told us we would vote for Mugabe whether we liked it or not," my police
source told me. "We voted in front of members of the Police Internal
Security Intelligence (PISI), who checked our ballot papers."
The tone of this "vote" was set previously by Assistant Police Commissioner
Nyakutsika, who told his men: "You will all do as you are told. Zanu-PF is
the only party allowed to rule this country. We cannot surrender to puppets
like Tsvangirai. We fought the whites, and we do not want them back here
again."
Another police source, an Inspector, confirmed to me that all the police
voting had been conducted without the presence of any officials from the
Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) or any other monitors.
"We carried the process out now, to get it done before international
observers start arriving next week. All the officers have now voted.
Tomorrow it will be the turn of their wives."
Just to boost figures, some civilians have also been appointed temporary
police officers in order to cast their votes correctly. And similar
procedures are said to be occurring within the army and other militia.
Let me finish with another quotation from Assistant Commissioner
Nyakutskikwa. Speaking to his men before they voted, he told them:
"Even if you tell the foreign press, even if you tell the western
governments, we do not care. They will do nothing."
You have to agree, he's got that right.
Posted on Wednesday, 11 June 2008 at 07:18
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As I said very well organised, but when is the UN or SADC going to do something!
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