HARARE: Robert Mugabe has put Zimbabwe’s army in charge of next weekend’s presidential election and vote count, compounding fears that his government’s campaign of mass intimidation will continue right up to the ballot box and that widespread vote tampering will be used to try to keep him in power.

Revelations that the election has fallen under the control of the military, just weeks after army chiefs threatened to stage a coup in the case of an opposition victory, will add to the pressure on the Commonwealth summit in Australia to take a firm stand against Mugabe.

Commonwealth leaders are deeply divided over the Zimbabwe crisis. Ministers were locked in discussion on Sunday in an attempt to find a compromise after Tony Blair failed to win agreement to suspend Zimbabwe from the organization immediately.

With just five days to go before the polling stations open, the growing body of evidence that the election is already deeply flawed will reinforce British pressure on Zimbabwe’s neighbours to declare the results null and void should Mugabe claim victory.

Almost every aspect of the vote, including the handling of ballot boxes, is now in the hands of a retired army colonel, Sobusa Gula-Ndebele. Mugabe quietly appointed him as head of the Electoral Supervisory Commission a few days after the military high command made its coup threat.

Col Gula-Ndebele has in turn appointed Brigadier Douglas Nyikayaramba as chief elections officer, the second most important post. The government says Brig Nyikayaramba retired from the army a few weeks ago, but sources close to the commission say he is merely on leave of absence.

The Guardian has learnt that in recent weeks soldiers have been appointed to all levels of the election process, including many as monitors who are supposed to act independently to ensure that ballot boxes are not tampered with and to verify the count.

The electoral commission has also recruited “war veterans”, who have led the often violent invasions of farms and been instrumental in the campaign of terror against Mugabe’s opponents, and members of the feared Central Intelligence Organization, to work alongside the soldiers.

Tellingly, the government refuses to reveal the names of the six members of the commission’s secretariat, but they are known to include at least two other army officers, including one from military intelligence.

“We’re very concerned about it,” said Reginald Matchaba-Hove, the chairman of the Zimbabwe election support network, an independent organisation that used to work closely with the government’s electoral commission but is now excluded. “It’s totally unprecedented for the military to run and monitor an election.”

The military’s infiltration of the electoral process means that soldiers, war veterans and ruling party officials responsible for a two-year government campaign of violence will be inside almost every polling station. In some cases, they will be “helping” voters to mark their ballots.

In addition to well documented decisions such as banning potentially critical foreign election observers, the Guardian has learnt that Mugabe’s war of attrition against the vote has taken on several other forms:

* The government has cut the number of polling stations in urban areas which firmly support the opposition, in the hope that long queues will discourage people from voting. It has increased balloting places in the countryside where Mugabe is more popular and rigging is easier.

* Independent monitors and party election agents will no longer be able to travel in the same vehicles as ballot boxes transported to and from the polls, raising concerns that the boxes could easily be switched.

* Hundreds of thousands of people have disappeared from the voters’ roll, including many disgruntled young people and most of the white population.

At the heart of Mugabe’s strategy to cling to power is the perpetual violence begun by the “war veterans” who led the farm invasions and now extended to towns and villages by the ruling Zanu-PF’s private militia, the National Youth Service Brigade.

In Mashonaland, where Mugabe must do well to stand any hope of winning the election, villagers have been ordered to take advantage of a provision which allows an election official to help them vote if, for instance, they are illiterate. —Dawn/The Guardian News Service.