Voter apathy hits Zimbabwe Senate elections

Voter apathy hits Zimbabwe Senate elections

• Ncube plays down MDC chances as polls open

• Zimbabweans to vote in senate poll

• Priscilla Misihairabwi: The many flaws of boycott politics

• MDC split a blow to opposition politics

• Trudy Stevenson: Tsvangirai strayed from MDC vision

• J Mkobi & B Mokoena: Aborting democracy, rearing ethnicity

• Chikoko Muponde: Is Tsvangirai his own man?

• MDC split final - official

• MDC talks end in deadlock

• Tsvangirai fires fresh salvo at colleagues

• D Muleya: MDC goes down, fighting itself!

• Ncube not for turning

• Prof J Moyo: 'All Zanu PF want is geriatrics to be senators'

By Agencies

VOTER apathy hit Zimbabwe's controversial elections for a new senate Saturday, denting the credibility of a poll partly boycotted by the opposition.

Critics say the Senate was designed to consolidate Robert Mugabe's rule.

Mugabe's governing Zanu PF party this year used its parliamentary majority to create the new 66-seat upper chamber of parliament, which will approve or reject bills passed by the lower house.

Zanu PF went into the elections a certain winner, with 35 of the 66 seats already in the bag, thanks to laws that guarantee seats to various ruling party loyalists and an opposition stay-away call that has seriously weakened his only real political challengers.

Observers said voters had turned up in trickles in many constituencies across the country by this afternoon, but Zimbabwe state radio reported that polling was slightly higher in Mugabe's rural strongholds. In some constituencies, an average 12% of registered voters had cast their ballots for candidates for the Senate, which critics say will be packed with Mugabe loyalists, further strengthening his grip over the country.

Some critics have dimissed the senate elections as a farce, and on Saturday, while polling stations were empty, Harare's central business district was jammed with people either queuing for money or scrounging for commodities in short supply.

The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has split into two feuding factions over the polls after Morgan Tsvangirai, the MDC leader, ordered a boycott, saying participation would lend legitimacy to a government that routinely rigs elections.

However, a rival MDC faction led by Welshman Ncube, the secretary general of the party, has nevertheless fielded 26 candidates, mostly in the southwestern Matabeleland provinces.

Tsvangirai and William Bango, his spokesperson, were unavailable for comment. However, Paul Themba-Nyathi, a spokesperson for the pro-senate group, said heavy rains in Matabeleland today would affect voter turnout in the region. "So far there is a trickle of voters going to polling stations," he said.

Mugabe, in power since independence from Britain in 1980, denies he rigs elections or that his controversial policies are to blame for a long-running economic crisis that has left Zimbabwe's 12 million struggling with food, fuel and foreign currency shortages.

The 81-year-old leader says the economy is being sabotaged by Western and domestic opponents trying to oust him for his nationalistic stance but particularly his seizure and redistribution of white-owned farms to landless blacks.

Some 3.2 million voters are registered to vote. Polls close at 7pm (1700 GMT) and results are expected by Monday. - Reuters
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