Zimbabwe votes as world watches, condemns

HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabweans vote in a one-sided presidential run-off on Friday after President Robert Mugabe defied mounting world condemnation and calls to postpone an election which the opposition says is a farce.

Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who beat Mugabe in the first round of voting in March, withdrew from the run-off last Sunday over violence and intimidation of his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) supporters by the ruling ZANU-PF party.

The poll has already been widely condemned and a security committee of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) has called for the vote to be postponed, saying Mugabe's re-election as the only candidate could lack legitimacy.

But Mugabe, 84, and planning to extend his 28-year-old uninterrupted rule, remained defiant and even ridiculed African leaders who have made calls to delay that election.

"Even today they are saying do away with the election, what stupidity is that," Mugabe said at his last campaign rally on Thursday, where he urged people to vote in large numbers.

Mugabe has barred observers from Western countries critical of his government and all but refused entry to hundreds of foreign journalists who were keen to cover the election.

A grouping of local observers has said its members were harassed and intimidated by government supporters and would not observe Friday's vote.

But Zimbabwe's electoral authorities have forged ahead with preparations for the poll, deploying thousands of polling officers across the country and distributing ballot boxes and papers to more than 8,000 polling stations.

Police said they would deploy officers to prevent any trouble.

Analysts said Mugabe was pressing ahead with the election in a bid to cement his grip on power and strengthen his hand if he is forced to negotiate with Tsvangirai.

LACKS LEGITIMACY

Mugabe has said he is willing to sit down with the MDC but would not bow to outside pressure, even from the African Union.

African heavyweight Nigeria backed the SADC's call for a postponement, saying it was doubtful a credible poll could be held under the current circumstances.

"Clearly Mugabe's plan is to be in a stronger position come negotiating day but the whole process lacks legitimacy both locally and internationally," John Makumbe, a political analyst and longtime Mugabe critic said.

Zimbabweans had hoped the run-off would help end a severe economic crisis marked by acute shortages of foreign currency, food, an 80 percent unemployment rate and the world's highest inflation rate, estimated to be two million percent.

A loaf of bread now costs 6 billion Zimbabwe dollars, or 150 times more than at the time of the first round of elections.

The MDC says nearly 90 of its supporters have died in political violence which it blamed on supporters of the ruling ZANU-PF. Mugabe says the opposition has been responsible for the violence.

Tsvangirai said if Mugabe declared himself president he would be shunned as an illegitimate leader who killed his own people.

"I will not be voting, I think it does not make sense to vote when one of the candidates has already withdrawn from that contest," said Terrence Mukumba, a Harare-based bank employee.

The MDC said it feared ZANU-PF would force people to vote, especially in rural areas, ruling party strongholds where Mugabe seemed to have lost his support to the MDC during the first round of voting in March.

"What will happen tomorrow is that people will be forced to vote ... because the military were mobilized to accompany this process," Tsvangirai said in an interview on Thursday with Portuguese radio station Renascenca, which gave Reuters a transcript.

Zimbabwean police said Britain and the United States were backing plans by the MDC and some NGOs to disrupt Friday's vote with violence, including burning down voting tents.

Since the March elections, Mugabe has rallied his shock troops, war veterans of the 1970s independence war and youth militia, in a violent campaign that critics say has made a free and fair election impossible.

"The whole thing, as we said at the beginning, was always going to be a runover over people and the closer we got to the 27th of June the clearer it became that this was a farce," MDC secretary general Tendai Biti told journalists on his release from prison on Thursday.

(Additional reporting by Cris Chinaka and Nelson Banya, Editing by Marius Bosch and Richard Balmforth)