A policeman keeps watch over ballot boxes in the rural district of Domboshawa outside Harare, Zimbabwe. Photograph: Howard Burditt/Reuters
Independent election monitors say they have seen significant irregularities, including the illicit opening of ballot boxes, that makes the partial recount under way of Zimbabwe's election an exercise in "futility".
As the recount enters its fifth day, and with the election commission saying it could take many more yet, foreign observers have documented concerns in many of the 23 constituencies where presidential and parliamentary votes are being counted again. All but two of them were won by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, helping it to end Zanu-PF's control of parliament for the first time since independence 28 years ago.
A monitor with the Southern African Development Community, Dianne Kohler-Barnard, says she witnessed tampering in two constituencies that "points to a concerted effort to rig the result in order to bring about a Mugabe 'victory'".
"In Mberengwa West they brought the first four boxes down for counting. Each box has two of the blue ties with numbers on it that are used to seal it along with padlocks. They had a whole set of duplicates of the blue ties, with the same numbers, on the other side of the hall. The keys to the padlocks are inside envelopes sealed with wax. All the seals were broken. I can only surmise that the keys were removed and the padlocks unlocked," she said.
"Then they discovered that the protocol register, which lists how many voting books were used and the numbers, was missing."
The next day, Kohler-Barnard was monitoring the recount in Goromonzi West.
"There were ballot boxes with keys missing. One had the padlock open. Some had the envelopes with the keys sealed with Sellotape instead of wax," she said.
"All the party agents had signed that they placed ten books of voting papers into a box after the election. When the box was opened there were only nine. They scrabbled around and found the book lying on the floor somewhere. Either the fairies came down and took the book out of the box or there was someone in there. It tells me that the box was opened, the ballots were fiddled with and it was repacked but the person did it badly."
Reports of significant tampering have come in from other constituencies, including Bulima East where the seals were broken on all of the boxes for the presidential election from 57 polling stations.
"From these particular instances I believe the election is fatally flawed. It is an exercise in futility," said Kohler-Barnard.
Another independent monitor said he had observed serious problems but questions whether the irregularities are on a sufficient scale to overturn the opposition's victories.
"There are definite irregularities, but it's not clear that it's been enough even though they know what they needed to do. Even if it is substantial in some areas I'm not sure it is widespread enough to really change things.
"Once they realise that we may never see these results. It wouldn't surprise me. Perhaps the recount is designed to draw things out while they get another plan in place to kill off the election altogether," he said.
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