Updated: 3:27 AM EST 0827 GMT -- 10 Mar 2002
Zimbabwe vote extension urged
HARARE, Zimbabwe -- Opposition leaders are demanding an extension to voting times in Zimbabwe's presidential elections after long queues and slow voting on the first day of the poll.
In some areas polling stations remained open through the night in an attempt to reduce the queues which the opposition said was a sign of President Robert Mugabe attempting to rig the election. Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai said the number of polling stations in strongholds of his Movement for Democratic Change had been cut in an attempt to disenfranchise his supporters. The second -- and officially final -- day of polling began at 7a.m (0500 GMT) and is set to close and 7 p.m. (1500 GMT).(Day one. Full story) Tsvangirai, who spent Saturday touring polling stations to see the extent of the delays, cast his vote early on Sunday. Mugabe voted on Saturday in Harare.
Tsvangirai told The Associated Press: "Mugabe is trying to move the goal posts to disenfranchise people, these people he thinks will vote against him." He has called the voting station delays a last-ditch effort by Mugabe and hisa ZANU-PF party to remain in power. Reginald Matchaba-Hove, of the independent Zimbabwe Election Support Network, backed calls for additional days for voting
It is a logistical problem...but there is an element where we feel...that it is a deliberate attempt to slow the process in those areas where the opposition has the most support," he told AP. The election -- and the rise to prominence of Tsvangirai -- has been the biggest threat yet to Mugabe's 22 years of rule. During campaigning Mugabe called the MDC puppets of Britain -- the nation's former colonial masters – and of Zimbabwe's minority white farmers who own most of the fertile farming land in the country.
He has tried to make the election a vote on the issue of redistributing white-owned land to landless blacks while Tsvangirai has attacked Mugabe's economic record of high unemployment and inflation. Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa told Reuters that voting might also be extended beyond the 7 p.m. Sunday deadline.
"Everyone who wants to vote will be allowed to vote. If it becomes necessary, we will consider extending the voting period," he said. But so far there have been few reports of violence. Tempers flared outside a polling booth in the western township of Kuwadzana on Saturday and 30 people were believed to have been injured after riot police fired tear gas in an effort to disperse the crowds, a polling official told CNN. And a group of 12 white farmers were taken into police custody in Harare after a confrontation with Mugabe supporters, the Commercial Farmers' Union said. Police did not say why the farmers were being held.