The name of Zimbabwe‘s last white leader, who ceded power to Robert Mugabe 33 years ago and who died six years ago, has at last been removed from the nation’s list of 5.7 million registered voters.

The state Electoral Commission says Ian Smith, the former prime minister, is among 345,000 dead people who have been struck from the official roll of voters ahead of crucial elections later in the year. As Zimbabwe celebrates its 33rd anniversary of independence on Thursday there is fresh focus on the poll, and a sense of optimism.

Mugabe has ruled this former British colony as president ever since he took over from Smith and the country changed its name from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe as it became independent. Mugabe now faces the biggest test of his political life.

Some Zimbabweans look to the polls with trepidation because of violence, intimidation and irregularities that have occurred in past elections. High among the problems in the 2008 election was the voters’ lists that included Smith and his white justice minister who died in 1984 and who, during the war for independence, had signed the execution warrants of Mugabe’s captured guerrillas.

The party of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, Mugabe’s main challenger, alleged the outdated lists were used in past vote rigging. Independent researchers say incorrect information on the voters’ roll opens the way to change results by including non-qualifying voters in polling in hotly contested districts. There are still some problems with the lists: The independent Zimbabwe Election Support Network notes, for example, that it contains voters whose names have been duplicated in different voting districts and tens of thousands more who are living abroad and are disqualified from voting.

Eddie Cross, a lawmaker in Tsvangirai’s party, said party officials are scheduled to meet with the state election body within days on the voters’ lists and to question the role in election preparations of an Israeli computer technology company that specializes in population registration and election systems that has raised new fears of high-tech manipulation of results. Cross said the company Nikuv has expanded its facilities and increased its staff in the country and is believed to be working with military and intelligence chiefs loyal to Mugabe in Harare.

Cross said youth groups loyal to Mugabe still drag travelers from buses and demand to see Mugabe party membership cards to show their loyalty, a means of intimidation known as “shaking a box of matches without lighting one.”

But

From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/Oqi1OvMcLz8/