|
|
 |
|
CNS Story:
|
ZIMBABWE-VOTE May-5-2008 (760 words) With photos. xxxi
Zimbabweans afraid to vote without monitors, says church official
By Bronwen Dachs
Catholic News Service
CAPE TOWN, South Africa (CNS) -- Zimbabweans will be afraid to return to the polls unless runoff elections are internationally monitored, a church official said after official results showed opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai won the most votes in the presidential election, but not enough to beat President Robert Mugabe.
Harassment of opposition supporters and those involved in monitoring the March elections is happening mostly in rural Zimbabwe, said Alouis Chaumba, head of Zimbabwe's Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace. In a May 4 telephone interview, he said "people are scared" to vote in a runoff because they fear for their lives.
With "polling agents being accused of being enemies of the state who want to sell out the country," few will want to be involved in monitoring the runoff, "which leaves the process open to cheating," he said.
"People voted for change and now feel utter disbelief" as they are told they need to vote again in a runoff, he said.
Those who voted in Zimbabwe's March 29 presidential and parliamentary elections "feel like it was a futile exercise and have lost faith in the process," Chaumba said.
Election officials said May 2 that Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, took 47.9 percent of the vote while Mugabe, 84, who has led Zimbabwe since independence from Britain in 1980, took 43.2 percent.
Zimbabwe election law requires 50 percent plus one vote to avoid a runoff.
The opposition maintains that it won the presidential poll outright with 50.3 percent of the vote.
The official results of the parliamentary vote confirmed that the opposition held a majority of seats for the first time in 28 years.
No date has been announced for a runoff.
"We want a process from which we can move on to a Zimbabwe where the dignity of the human person is respected," Chaumba said.
"We need an impartial body to facilitate the process, such as the African Union or United Nations," he said.
"Another Zimbabwe is possible," Chaumba said, noting that they "want readmission to the world of nations and to reclaim our status in Africa as the breadbasket of the region with a highly educated population."
"Our human capital is now outside the country, and we want to draw them back," he said.
Past elections in Zimbabwe "have brought nothing but suffering, and we have to move on. We cannot continue in this environment," he said.
In late April Zimbabwe's Christian leaders called for international intervention in the country's crisis, saying that those accused of voting for the opposition are being tortured, abducted and murdered.
Churches are bearing the brunt of the country's instability, Chaumba said, noting that "many of those who are fleeing after being beaten and tortured are finding solace in churches."
"So many people are internally displaced, and those who would normally be providing for families are now looking for assistance for themselves," he said.
Chaumba said "everything has come to a standstill" since the March elections, with teachers not returning to work and doctors on strike.
"The health and education systems are in dire straits and the government is doing nothing about it," he said.
Zimbabwe has the world's highest inflation rate -- more than 100,000 percent -- an unemployment rate of more than 80 percent and severe shortages of basic foods and fuel.
The World Council of Churches and All Africa Conference of Churches said in a late-April report that the situation in Zimbabwe "creates a dangerous vacuum that could lead to total disintegration of the nation as well as threaten the unity of the church."
Noting that the elections "were far from being free and fair" with the process "skewed in favor of the incumbent who openly utilized state resources to his advantage," the report "calls on the ecumenical family to continue to uphold the people of Zimbabwe in their prayers and to remain in solidarity with them in the postelectoral period."
Also in a late-April statement, Honduran Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga of Tegucigalpa, president of the international Catholic umbrella group Caritas Internationalis, urged the U.N. Security Council to impose an arms embargo on Zimbabwe.
The cardinal also said international observers should be sent to Zimbabwe to monitor human rights.
"No more arms must reach Zimbabwe unless there is the guarantee that they will not be used against the people. Church workers are reporting an upsurge in violence that is deeply troubling," Cardinal Rodriguez said.
END
Copyright (c) 2008 Catholic News Service/USCCB. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed.
CNS · 3211 Fourth St NE · Washington DC 20017 · 202.541.3250
|
|
|
|
