HARARE, ZIMBABWE — With longtime incumbent Robert Mugabe continuing to campaign despite his opponent's withdrawal, Zimbabwean voters were warned of violent repercussions if they fail to vote in today's presidential runoff.
Mugabe, campaigning in a lime-green jacket bearing the ruling ZANU-PF party logo, declared that Zimbabwe would not accept calls from African leaders or anyone else to postpone the vote.
In recent days, Mugabe has been the subject of unprecedented criticism from normally silent African leaders, including a rebuke from former South African President Nelson Mandela, seen as the continent's elder statesman. Mandela decried Zimbabwe's "tragic failure of leadership."
"We have some of our brothers in Africa making that call, pushing us to violate our own law and we have refused to do so -- we are sticking to our law," said Mugabe, who refused to postpone the vote after opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai pulled out Sunday because of violence that has left 85 supporters dead and 3,000 injured.
Tsvangirai warned Thursday that the election was a sham that would be rejected by the international community as illegitimate. But Mugabe, 84, who has ruled Zimbabwe since its independence in 1980, said the nation would not accept solutions imposed from outside.
"I know some people are gearing themselves for an attack on Zimbabwe," Mugabe said. But "all our elections have been free."
Tsvangirai said people would be forced to vote "because the military were mobilized to accompany this process."
"Traditional leaders are being forced to tell their communities . . . they have to vote tomorrow," he said in comments reported by Reuters news agency. "So the violence and pressure on the people is continuing."
If he remains in office, Mugabe faces the prospect of governing without a parliamentary majority and the task of turning around the country's broken economy in the face of increasing international isolation. Many analysts see the economy as the biggest threat to his future, given that the annual inflation rate is running at millions of percent and most industries have shut down.
In his final day of campaigning, Mugabe handed out minibuses and carts to various communities and said the government would act to keep down the prices of basic goods. Several days ago, he launched shops that he said the government would stock with basic goods at low prices.
