Mugabe plot to rig election exposed

President's 'war veterans' to get more than one vote - and weapons training

Plans by Zimbabwe's President Mugabe to rig next year's presidential election have been exposed, just as his beleaguered nation begins gearing up for the crunch ballot which he is expected to lose.

His plot hinges on the multiple registration of ruling-party supporters in different constituencies to allow them to vote several times; the second part of the strategy involves relocating more than 500,000 unemployed urban dwellers to commercial farms now being confiscated from whites without compensation.

Mr Mugabe, 77, who has been in power since independence from Britain was achieved in 1980, announced that he would run for another six-year term next April, despite his government's massive unpopularity.

The business and financial newspaper the Financial Gazette described his rigging plans last Thursday.

Mr Mugabe aims to outflank the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) by moving the hundreds of thousands of unemployed and other desperate urban dwellers into farming areas under the controversial fast-track land-resettlement exercise.

The relocation of registered voters from urban to rural areas – in exchange for their pledged votes – will bolster the ruling Zanu-PF party's rural support. Mr Mugabe's party traditionally enjoys support in rural areas.

The relocated people will get slices of land from the farms the Zimbabwe government has been seizing from whites. They will then be expected to transfer their votes to a rural constituency where they have been resettled.

The plan was tailor-made to fit Zanu's overall presidential election strategy. A pilot phase proved successful in the recent parliamentary by-election in Bindura constituency, where 4,000 mainly Zanu supporters and "war veterans" were moved from surrounding towns registered as voters in the constituency. Zanu won the by-election by 5,000 votes.

Government officials admitted that Mr Mugabe was not leaving anything to chance and would do all he could to ensure he won the presidential election. He has vowed never to let the MDC, which he calls a British puppet, rule Zimbabwe.

The president is known to have contracted an Israeli company to supply $20m-worth of riot vehicles and water cannons for the police force, which he has often used to intimidate opposition supporters.

The Home Affairs permanent secretary, Mike Matshiya, assured the Israeli arms firm, Beit Alfa Trailer Company, that the Zimbabwe government would strain every nerve to raise the foreign currency needed to purchase the equipment.

Zimbabwe is in the midst of a desperate hard-currency shortage. Fuel supplies are exhausted and the price of basic goods is rocketing.

The opposition complains that it is immoral of Mr Mugabe to spend large sums of money on arms purchases at a time when the country cannot feed itself. The Finance Minister, Simba Makoni, has said that Zimbabwe has no money to import food.

Information about plans to equip the police coincided with reports that groups of "war veterans" – Mr Mugabe's shock troops in his brutal campaign against white farmers – are undergoing training in gun-handling at the police's Morris Depot in Harare. Sources at the depot say veterans from all over Zimbabwe are undergoing training in batches of 50, in preparation for their deployment in the election campaign.