Zimbabwe turnout a slap in face for critics

|PIC1|Zimbabwe's state-run Herald newspaper said on Saturday the presidential election turnout could be a record and that this was a slap in the face to world leaders who had criticised President Robert Mugabe.

A storm of condemnation from inside and outside Africa greeted Mugabe's decision to hold Friday's election, in which he was the sole candidate. Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and Western powers denounced the poll as illegitimate.

Tsvangirai, who won the first round on March 29 but pulled out of the run-off and took refuge in the Dutch embassy because of what he called state-backed violence, said millions of people stayed away from polling stations despite intimidation.

The U.N. Security Council said it deeply regretted the staging of the election because free and fair conditions did not exist, and Nobel Peace laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu said the world had the right to intervene to end the crisis.

Many Western leaders urged the African Union to take action at a summit in Egypt on Monday, saying Mugabe's 28 years in power had to end because the political turmoil and economic meltdown in Zimbabwe threatened regional security.

The Herald contradicted international media reports that many Zimbabweans boycotted the ballot and statements by witnesses that government militias forced people to vote for the 84-year-old Mugabe.

"Initial reports from polling stations countrywide indicate that this would be the biggest turnout Zimbabwe has ever had, which is a slap in the face for detractors who claimed this was a 'Mugabe election'," said the paper. It gave no turnout figure.

The Herald said the election was peaceful and quoted the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission as saying counting had started and that it hoped to begin announcing results on Saturday.

On Friday, Tsvangirai, who says almost 90 of his supporters have been killed, told a news conference: "What is happening today is not an election. It is an exercise in mass intimidation with people all over the country being forced to vote."

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A witness in Chitungwiza township, south of Harare, told Reuters voters were forced to hand the serial number of their ballot paper and their identity details to an official from Mugabe's ZANU-PF party so he could see how they voted.

The Zimbabwe Crisis Coalition rights group said village heads had "assisted" teachers to vote in some rural areas after forcing them to declare they were illiterate.

The top official of the African Union said there could be no immediate solution to the problem of Zimbabwe.

"I am convinced it will be solved in a credible way. But please give us time to solve it with our heads of state," AU Commission chairman Jean Ping said at a foreign ministers' meeting ahead of Monday's summit.

South African President Thabo Mbeki is the designated regional mediator for Zimbabwe, but has been widely criticised for being soft on Mugabe despite his country having to cope with millions of Zimbabwean refugees.

The U.N. Security Council said in a unanimously agreed statement it was "a matter of deep regret" that Zimbabwe held the vote, but some Western diplomats said the text was far too weak. Earlier this week, the council condemned the violence.

The statement, watered down from a much tougher previous version, was backed by the whole 15-nation council, including South Africa, China and Russia - all of which had been long opposed to any discussion on Zimbabwe.

Western diplomats said the statement was disappointing because it did not say the results would be illegitimate.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the United States was working with other U.N. members on a resolution to send "a strong message of deterrence" to Mugabe's government over the violence.

But diplomats at the U.N. said resistance from South Africa, China and Russia meant any sanctions were unlikely to be imposed by the Security Council. Rather they would be imposed by the United States, the European Union and other Western governments.

Tutu said African countries should declare Mugabe an illegitimate leader and impose a blockade of landlocked Zimbabwe, including a flight ban.

"A government has the obligation to protect its citizens. If it will not protect them ... or it is unable to do so, then the international community knows now that it has an instrument to intervene," Tutu told Channel 4.

Mugabe, in power since independence from Britain in 1980, has presided over Zimbabwe's slide into economic chaos with inflation estimated to have hit at least 2 million percent. He blames Western sanctions.