Zimbabwe Extends Election After Voting Is Dogged by Delays

(Bloomberg) -- Zimbabwe’s election was plagued by delays and logistical problems, prompting the authorities to extend voting to a second day in some areas.

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The extension was announced in a government gazette late Wednesday after many people who had lined up to cast their ballots failed in their attempts. Justice Minister Ziyambi Ziyambi said in an interview that he had requested President Emmerson Mnangagwa to allow the vote to continue “so that people from the affected areas are not disenfranchised.”

Mnangagwa is expected to be reelected despite a long-running economic crisis in the resource-rich country that has led to the near-collapse of government services. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have accused the government of undermining civil liberties over the past five years and closing the political space for the opposition.

The 80-year-old Mnangawa praised the turnout as he cast his ballot in his rural constituency. “This time around, there was more awareness,” he told reporters.

More than three-quarters of polling stations in the capital, Harare, and others in Bulawayo, the second-largest city, opened late as observers criticized the slow delivery of ballot papers.

“We were assured that material is going” to be available “in all the polling stations way ahead of this morning,” Nevers Mumba, head of the Southern African Development Community observer mission, told reporters. “That is one aspect we are going to interrogate during this process.”

After casting his ballot in Harare, opposition leader Nelson Chamisa criticized the election’s conduct but expressed confidence he would prevail.

“There is going to be a new leader, a new president, a new government,” he told reporters. “We are winning this election, we have won this election. They know it. That is why they are panicking.”

Chamisa, who continues to dispute the results of the 2018 vote, and his party, the Citizens Coalition for Change, had to file lawsuits to keep its members on the ballot. Another opposition party boycotted the polls, after scores of its candidates were disqualified, and many observers believe the election was over before it even began.

Read more: Odds Stacked Against Zimbabwe Opposition as Election Nears

Winning a tainted vote may derail efforts by Mnangagwa, who’s held power since longtime ruler Robert Mugabe was ousted in a 2017 coup, to restructure the nation’s $18 billion of debt arrears. Creditors including the African Development Bank have warned that any deal would be contingent on a credible contest.

The incumbent has insisted that the vote will be free and fair and has vowed he won’t serve beyond a constitutionally-mandated second term should he win. His Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front has ruled the country since independence from the UK in 1980.

There were no reports of major violence, which has marred several previous elections.

The southern African country has 6.6 million registered voters, 83% of whom were eligible to cast ballots, according to Priscila Chigumba, chairwoman of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission. Voters will also elect 210 members of the National Assembly and 80 senators.

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