By Manoah Esipisu
Harare - Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe accused the United Nations at a weekend rally of trying to hijack monitoring of the country's crucial June 24-25 parliamentary elections.
"The world body tried to hijack the election monitoring process. Instead of sending observers, the UN wanted to send an irrelevant technical team, which wanted to co-ordinate the whole process," said the official Sunday Mail late on Saturday, quoting Mugabe.
Representatives of the European Union, the Southern African Development Community, the Commonwealth, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, and the Organisation of African Unity are among the thousands of foreign and local observers monitoring the campaign and the elections themselves.
The United Nations said on Friday it had pulled out of the election process after the government rejected its offer to co-ordinate the international observers.
The controversy erupted as another activist of the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) was reported to have died after being beaten by suspected Zanu-PF supporters.
An official of the ruling Zanu-PF party echoed Mugabe's complaint about the United Nations on Sunday.
"If they (the UN) wanted to send observers, they were free to do so, but they cannot appoint themselves co-ordinators of sovereign observer missions," said Jonathan Moyo, a senior member of the party's campaign directorate.
Opposition says process is flawed
MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai said the withdrawal of the UN team confirmed the MDC's argument that the process was fundamentally flawed and a free and fair poll was impossible.
"For an African secretary-general of the UN (Kofi Annan) to show his displeasure in this way is a serious commentary on the actions of an African despot," Tsvangirai said on Sunday.
Tsvangirai urged all other international groups of observers to stay "to bear witness to the appalling human rights violations taking place in Zimbabwe today" and "to give our people the sense of security to ... cast their votes".
At least 28 people, mainly MDC supporters, have died and hundreds of others have been beaten, raped or forced to flee their homes in the last few months.
In the latest incident, MDC activist Finos Zhau, 23, died on Friday after he and his brother were abducted and beaten by suspected Zanu-PF supporters, the MDC said in a statement.
The two brothers were held at a farm in the Mberengwa district in southern Zimbabwe for four days and beaten with sticks and iron bars, said the MDC. Zhau died of his injuries and his brother was taken to hospital.
Commonwealth Secretary-General Don McKinnon said on Sunday conditions did not appear conducive to a free and fair poll.
"There are far too many people being killed in front of an election. Far too many. That's not a good omen for an election," he told BBC Television's Breakfast with Frost.
Moyo dismissed McKinnon as a "fairweather observer who says things depending on his location".
"As to whether the elections are free and fair is only a matter that observers can judge after the elections," he added.
Opponents blame government for violence
Government opponents blame Zanu-PF supporters and veterans of the country's 1970s liberation war for the violence which followed the invasion of hundreds of white-owned farms since February by veterans.
Mugabe has denied responsibility for the violence, but backed the veterans in what he said was a legitimate effort to retake land stolen during the British colonial era.
"We are determined to pursue our programme of land redistribution because there is a moral and political case for that programme," Mugabe told a rally south of Harare on Sunday.
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, former wife of ex-South African president Nelson Mandela, created a stir in Harare on Sunday when she attended a women's soccer match.
Madikizela-Mandela said: "I wish everybody well and we pray for peaceful elections. We hope they will be fair and fruitful elections and may the better man win."
Zanu-PF officials had hoped the charismatic African National Congress Women's League president would address party rallies on Sunday to boost a flagging campaign in urban areas.
But Madikizela-Mandela said she could not comment further.
"I wish I could say something about that. Unfortunately there are spokespersons of the South African government who are equipped to respond to that," she said.
Meanwhile, the weekly Standard newspaper reported that the polls could be legally challenged on the grounds that the statutory Electoral Supervisory Commission (ESC) had failed to exercise some of its key constitutional obligations, including taking part in the supervision of voter registration.
The ESC has the task of supervising the electoral process and the elections themselves. - Reuters