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'There was no election. There was a selection of the president.'
June 30, 2008 8:49 AM
By Jim Sciutto, ABC News Senior Foreign Correspondent
This was our second trip into Zimbabwe in two months. When we visited in early April, Tsvangirai had just won the first round of the presidential election. The country was frozen – the Zimbabwean economy is in collapse – but there was some budding hope.
This time, we found complete despair.
“Most of the people, they are not happy,” one man told us. “We can only say there was no election. There was a selection of the president.”
“Were people forced to vote?” I asked. “Yes, they were forced to vote,” he answered. “Especially in the rural areas.”
Driving on one of the main east-west highways in the country, we didn’t see a single car on the road. Part of the reason is that people can’t afford gasoline, but it’s also a measure of fear. The crackdown has driven people into their homes.
Police road-blocks marked every stretch of road. Members of the president’s ruling Zanu-PF party followed us wherever we went. We posed as tourists because we’d learned of three American journalists detained on their way out of the country.
Despite the police presence, Zimbabweans were eager to talk to us – and everyone we met expressed outrage at the election.
We visited a polling station where the official posted results showed 17 votes each for Tsvangirai and Mugabe, ludicrous in a city with tens of thousands of people. The guard at the station told us the vast majority of voters spoiled their ballots by writing an X across both names.
Then he pointed to his shoes and said, “This is all I have. In Zimbabwe we have nothing.”
The exchange rate was a telling sign of the economy’s spiraling decline. In April, I exchanged one U.S. dollar for 50 million Zimbabwean dollars. This time, one dollar is worth 10 billion Zimbabwean dollars – an inflation rate of 30,000% in two and a half months.
For more see Jim's original story
June 30, 2008 in Jim Sciutto | Permalink | User Comments (0)
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