Dear Editor,
It has been more than a week since elections were held in Zimbabwe and the people still don’t know the outcome giving the impression that the dictator Robert Mugabe plans to change the result which by all accounts show he was handily defeated.
Elections in Zimbabwe have been rigged in a similar fashion to previous electoral frauds in Guyana. But for last month’s election, Muagbe acquiesced to an opposition demand for ballots to be counted at the place of polling similar to Desmond Hoyte’s acceptance of the counting of ballots at polling places in Guyana for the 1992 elections. This spelled his doom. Hoyte lost in October 1992 and Mugabe appears to have suffered the same fate last week.
In Zimbabwe, the ballots were counted and signed by the parties’ representatives as well as the election official and the results posted to reduce fraud. The opposition claimed that their count showed Mugabe suffered a humiliating defeat in the Presidential balloting but unofficial counts from the Elections Commission showed a close result that would require a runoff because no candidate received a majority of the ballots.
The problem is the commission has not released an official tally of the ballots although it said the opposition has won the parliamentary elections by a slight margin. The opposition count from posted ballots showed them winning a large majority of seats in parliament. But the unofficial commission’s count showed the opposition has a simple majority of seats. International observers note that the opposition has won the Presidential and parliamentary elections. So the Election Commission cannot be trusted.
The opposition has gone to court to force the commission to release the results. But the court adjourned the case.
A New York newspaper exposed the rigging with a columnist noting that in spite of rigging, Mugabe still lost. Now, he is unwilling to accept the voters’ verdict.
The world community and the international media must speak out against fraud. There is a need for the restoration of democracy.
Having been in power for 28 years, the country is on the brink of economic collapse. Inflation is running at 100,000 percent and the Zimbabwe currency which was the highest in Africa in 1980 is trading at several millions to one U.S dollar. Zimbabweans deserve to live again. Time to end tyranny in Zimbabwe.
Yours faithfully,
Vishnu Bisram
