Zim registers 800 000 new voters as MDC cries foul

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ELECTION officials in Zimbabwe said Tuesday over 800,000 new voters had registered for next year's general elections, bringing people eligible to vote to over five million.

Voter registration for the elections, a combination of municipal, presidential and parliamentary polls, ended last week after being open for two months.

The polls will be held early next year, and are the first to be conducted jointly.

"It (voter registration) was successful, and the response from the public was quite encouraging," an election official said.

The election, in the presidential category, will pit 83-year old President Robert Mugabe against an array of youthful opposition candidates, some less than half his age.

In spite of opposition even within his ruling party Zanu PF, the veteran Zimbabwean leader has said he would seek a new five-year term.

If he wins, Mugabe will be in power uninterrupted for 32 years, making him one of Africa's longest serving leaders.

In the registration exercise, mobile teams went to all corners of the country to register voters for the poll, but opposition officials complained of the process.

Nelson Chamisa and Gabriel Chaibva, respective spokesmen for the two factions so the opposition MDC led by Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara were united in their condemnation of the exercise.

Chamisa said: "The whole thing was done to give Zanu PF an edge over us before the elections are held. Rigging is already going on. The whole exercise was done clandestinely. In the rural areas our supporters were being denied the chance to register.

"We have reports from rural areas that youths were told that their chance to register would come later. Only old people were being allowed into registration centres. There has not been much advertising of the whole process."

Chaibva added: "We have cases where chiefs refused to give people letters to prove that they reside in their areas. The whole exercise was a shambles. There were also a lot of logistical problems where you found that there was no stationery or officers reported for duty late due to fuel problems."
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