Zimbabwe arrests election monitors as opposition lashes ‘flawed’ poll

HARARE: Police said Thursday they had arrested more than three dozen local monitors of Zimbabwe’s elections as the opposition cried foul over irregularities in a poll forced by delays to stretch into an unprecedented second day.

Thirty-nine monitors from two Zimbabwean pro-democracy groups were arrested in multiple raids on Wednesday night and their computers and mobile phones were seized, police said.

“These were coordinating the alleged release of election results by some civic organisations,” police spokesman Paul Nyathi said.

Some were taken from an “election observation data centre,” according to a group of human rights lawyers.

The monitors are staff with the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) and Election Resource Centre (ERC), which seek to promote free and fair elections.

Less than a quarter of polling stations in Harare — an opposition stronghold — opened on time on Wednesday, electoral authorities said, blaming delays in printing ballot papers. The problems forced President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who is seeking a second term, to issue a late-night directive extending the vote by another day.

In dozens of voting stations, voters braved long waits for ballot papers to be delivered for the triple elections, for the presidency, legislature and municipal councils.

The poll is being watched across southern Africa as a test of support for Mnangagwa’s ZANU-PF party, whose 43-year rule has been battered by a moribund economy and charges of authoritarianism.

The largest opposition Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC), which poses the biggest challenge to Mnangagwa, lashed the electoral process as “fundamentally flawed.”

Delays, intimidation and other irregularities meant the ballot was “unable to produce a free and fair electoral outcome,” CCC spokesman Promise Mkwananzi told reporters.