Zimbabwe to ban international election monitors

Zimbabwe plans to ban independent monitors ahead of presidential elections expected early next year.

Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa said he intended to introduce a law to Parliament banning all independent election observers when the legislature reconvenes next week.

The government will provide its own observers, he said.

The European Union last month warned of possible sanctions if Zimbabwe refused to admit election observers and failed to end political violence that has killed scores of opposition supporters and white farmers in recent months.

About 24,000 people, many recruited by civic groups, monitored parliamentary elections last year in which the opposition Movement for Democratic Change won 57 of 120 elected seats.

However, most oft hose civic groups ‘‘are partial, foreign-funded, loyal to their funders and therefore produce monitors who are partisan,’’ Chinamasa said.

The Movement for Democratic Change will continue to press for independent supervision of the presidential election, said Welshman Ncube, secretary-general of the party.

The party had lodged 45 protests after last year’s parliamentary elections which had been preceded by wide-scale political violence.

’’We have a delinquent government of geriatrics who want to cling to power regardless of anything. So we will insist the elections be held under the full glare of scrutiny, because they want to cheat left, right and centre,’’ Ncube said.

Information Minister Jonathan Moyo said critics of the planned amendment to the Electoral Act were ‘‘inherently subversive’’ and ’’unpatriotic.’’

The European Union and other foreign funders ‘‘are partisan and should never be allowed to poke their noses into our elections,’’ he said.

’’We will not mortgage our constitutional bodies and processes either as a reaction to what these people are saying, or accommodating their ultimatums,’’ he said.

President Robert Mugabe has accused his critics of being a front for British attempts to frustrate his plans to redistribute 5,000 white-owned farms to landless blacks without paying compensation.

Opposition leaders and human rights groups say Mugabe is using the land issue to cling to power amid a massive economic crisis.