Jan Raath in Harare
President Mugabe betrayed yesterday signs of anxiety over tomorrow's elections as the scale of the clamour for change throughout Zimbabwe became ever more obvious. About forty armoured vehicles, including four Israeli-made water cannon, anti-riot trucks and six armoured personnel carriers packed with heavily armed troops, travelled through central Harare in the afternoon - a show of force never before seen in any election since independence 28 years ago. The President had delivered earlier an angry statement via State media, warning Morgan Tsvangirai, the opposition leader, and his faction of the divided Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) against staging demonstrations if they lost the election. "If they make a disturbance like in Kenya, you will see," he said. "We are not joking. We warn the MDC, if they want to put a rope around their necks, that is OK." Mr Tsvangirai has been urging his supporters to stay around the polling stations after casting their ballots, "to defend your votes" against attempts to rig the election. Despite Mr Mugabe's threat, Mr Tsvangirai repeated his call late yesterday to frenzied supporters at a rally in the neighbouring dormitory town of Chitungwiza. He held talks yesterday with the two other opposition leaders, Simba Makoni, Mr Mugabe's former Finance Minister, who has shaken the ruling Zanu PF party by his challenge to his erstwhile mentor, and Arthur Mutambara, leader of the smaller faction of the MDC, to work out a joint strategy against the expected attempts to rig the vote. The three were due to make an unprecented joint appearance at a press conference, but Mr Tsvangirai had been delayed, Mr Makoni said. He added that the three had been discussing the threat of cheating and that their consultations had been "under way for some time".
"It is crucial that the three of them confront the rigging jointly," a Western diplomat said. "They have to do it together or Mugabe will beat them." Mr Makoni showed photographs of a large, empty field in a Harare township, where the only signs of development had been pegs in the ground to mark plots for would-be homeowners. Yet, according to the electoral roll, it is a ward where 8,000 people are resident with specific addresses, at a density of up to 75 people on each 30 sq m plot, and who are to be served by ten polling stations. "This is evidence of a deliberated, sophisticated and premeditated plan to steal the election from us," Mr Makoni said. Mr Mugabe denied that his Administration had rigged elections and was about to do so again. "They want to tell lies, lies," he said. However, his denial is undermined by the determination of Tobaiwa Mudede, the Registrar-General, to keep opposition parties from getting hold of a digitally searchable copy of the electoral roll, which still includes the names of the first two MDC activists murdered at the start of the 2000 election campaign, and that of Ian Smith, the former Prime Minister of white-ruled Rhodesia, who died last year. Two years ago Mr Mudede defied court orders to give independent researchers access to ballot papers from the 2002 presidential election, when Mr Mugabe got 54 per cent of the vote after a savage campaign of intimidation. It is not clear whether the President is aware of the depth of feeling against him, boosted daily by worsening hardship. Queues for bread and money in Harare yesterday appeared to have lengthened, as the basics of life become more difficult to find.
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