Methodist Africa Secretary voices concerns after Zimbabwe election

The Methodist Church Secretary for Africa, Mr Roy Crowder,has warned that Zimbabwe faces serious economic and politicalchallenges following the re-election of Robert Mugabe as itsPresident. Speaking in the week after the election, Mr Crowder madethe following statement:

"We have seen two years of systematic action by the governmentto win this election since the Constitutional Referendum andParliamentary elections in 2000 which were a disaster for theruling party Zanu PF.

"The Government increased opportunities for Zanu PF supportersto vote and decreased opportunities for opposition supporters tovote. It seems to have been quite a sophisticated election theft inwhich most people who actually managed to vote did so in areasonably standard way. So it is difficult for observers to reportgross malpractice and for most people in most places the actualconduct of the voting procedure was slow but reasonable. There doesnot seem to have been box stuffing with fraudulent votingforms.

"But all that happened to frustrate, invalidate and intimidateopposition voters in the run up is what makes it not free and fair.Mr Mugabe is an extremely skilled politician but seems not benoticing that he is ruining the country.

"It is unfortunate that a divide is appearing between Westernand Southern nations' reaction to the 'result'. But already that ischanging as the Commonwealth delegation has declared it was notfree and fair. Members of the South African delegation have alsochallenged the conclusion of their chairman. Members of church andcivil society observation teams who were overwhelmingly Africanhave also described the election as not free and fair.

"The real divide seems to be between the government leaders ofSouthern African nations and their peoples. Leaders may fear theywould not win free and fair elections themselves. They certainlyunderstandably fear the effect on their own countries ofinstability on top of economic collapse in Zimbabwe.

"It would have been helpful if the international community hadgathered all the observations of all the observer groups and workedout a common viewpoint. That could have provided a political spacefor some events to move within Zimbabwe. At the moment the sense ofan 'election victory' seems to be coming unstuck as more and moreobservers point out the problems in the poll.

"So I don't see this as a conflict between black and whiteZimbabweans as Mr Mugabe wants to portray it. The Methodist Churchin Zimbabwe has lived through worse conflict and will not beseriously damaged by this. It is important for the church tocontinue presenting the case for proper values to be observed ingovernance and political life as it did in the ZCC Statement 'Thetruth shall make you free'."