Zim poll head to head

from the BBC:

Wilf Mbanga: We know for a fact that people around Mugabe are in panic mode.

The army chief has warned Zimbabweans that if they voted for anyone other than Robert Mugabe they would stage a coup and the chief of prisons a couple of weeks ago told his staff to vote for Robert Mugabe and nobody else.

Will the army intervene in the election?

Mugabe himself is saying he will walk it, he will win by a landslide. I don't know where he gets that from because the economy has collapsed, services have collapsed. I don't know why anyone would vote for a continuation of the suffering we have in our country.

What will happen is that Mugabe will stuff the ballot boxes, he will rig the election.

That's the only way he can win. For example, soldiers and Zimbabwean diplomats around the world vote in private - there are no international or local observers in place - this allows them to rig the elections, as their votes are added to votes from their constituencies.

If you look at the polling stations, Harare, for example, has 733,000 voters and they have only been give just over 300 polling stations. This means voters have to vote four times in less than 12 seconds. This is impossible.

Whereas, for example if you look at Mashonaland Central, which is seen as a Mugabe stronghold, they have 500,000 voters and over 1,200 polling stations.....