Labour protest expected over election result

Zimbabwe's labour movement is likely to call for a mass stay away in protest over alleged government rigging of the country's watershed weekend presidential election, senior union officials told IRIN on Wednesday. The powerful Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) is to hold a general council meeting on Thursday to decide its response to the official poll result which gave President Robert Mugabe an overwhelming election victory. General-secretary Wellington Chibebe said the verdict would "most likely be mass action". "We have received numerous calls from workers calling for action," he told IRIN. Protest would serve "to show the government that we do not recognise the electoral process". Amid reports on Wednesday of a heavy security presence on city streets, Chibebe said he would "initially want people to stay at home knowing the likely reaction from the government" to any sign of public protest. "We are concerned, but not afraid of the reaction" from the authorities, he added. Chibebe said apart from a crackdown, the government could deregister the ZCTU in favour of the state-supported Zimbabwe Federation of Trade Unions, which emerged last year in support of company invasions by so-called war veterans. The ZCTU has been a thorn in the government's side throughout much of the 1990s. In response to falling standards of living, the labour movement found an independent political voice under the leadership of Morgan Tsvangirai and led opposition to the government's management of the economy. The ZCTU provided the organisational backbone for Zimbabwe's first serious opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), formed just two years ago. Brian Kagoro of the Crisis in Zimbabwe Committee, a civil society umbrella group, said that the ruling ZANU-PF party was "spoiling for a fight", and he was in "no doubt" that the security forces would use "deadly force" to put down political dissent. Kagoro said Zimbabwe was entering a critical period in which the government and opposition would be "testing each other's resolve" and protest would have to be "staggered" to maintain its momentum. "Ultimately the matter will have to be negotiated," he told IRIN. "We are at a watershed, nobody knows what will happen, I don't think there are any easy answers." Mugabe was announced the official winner on Wednesday of the 9-11 March election, which local monitors and some western observers described as deeply flawed by ZANU-PF intimidation and voting irregularities. The result gave the 78-year-old Mugabe, in power since independence in 1980, a further six-year term, and drew his supporters out on the streets of Harare. Mugabe's opponent, MDC leader Tsvangirai, immediately denounced the poll as "the biggest election fraud I have witnessed in my life". However, the South African and Nigerian observer missions described the election as broadly legitimate. Both countries, along with Australia, are on a Commonwealth panel charged with assessing the election and recommending action on possible expulsion from the 54-member organisation. The Zimbabwean government has also insisted that the election represented the will of the people. But critics have pointed to the arrests and intimidation of MDC polling agents and local election monitors, the disenfranchisement of urban voters, and a suspiciously high turnout in rural areas as evidence of poll fraud.