Zimbabwe media ignores Blair's re-election

Zimbabwe’s state media today ignored Tony Blair’s election success, having earlier highlighted problems with omissions of voters’ names from rolls in some constituencies.

Until 7am Irish time the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation remained silent about Blair’s success.

President Robert Mugabe, 81, has declared Mr Blair an arch enemy.

Mugabe, in power since 1980 independence, described the recent March 31 Zimbabwean parliamentary elections as “the anti-Blair poll” claiming the country’s chronic economic crisis resulted from “British sponsored sanctions” designed to reverse seizure of 5,000 white owned farms.

Mugabe’s ruling party gained a greatly increaed majority but Western diplomats said the election was marred by widespread rigging. In some opposition strongholds, up to 25% of voters were turned away when their names were allegedly not traceable on rolls.

Early bulletins on Thursday said Blair’s government suffered “major embarrassment” when several hundred voters’ names could not be found on rolls in east London.

The ZBC quoted unidentified analysts, saying their being “disenfranchised” was the fault of Blair “who had tried to criticise well-run elections in countries such as Zimbabwe”.