Mugabe Battles Fraud Claims in National Vote

Zimbabwe is voting in a national ballot today as opponents accuse Africa’s longest-serving ruler of rigging the vote, Reuters reports. “We will succeed. We will conquer,” declared a characteristically confident President Robert Mugabe, 84, who dismissed talk of corrupted voting. “We don't rig elections. I cannot sleep with my conscience if I have rigged.”

The opposition MDC party lobbed charges of inflated voter roles and warned that detergent can erase ballot ink. Rigged or not, analysts expect Mugabe to win, although he has presided over 100,000% inflation, dire food shortages, and an HIV/AIDS epidemic. “I am voting for change,” one voter said. “It is the only way this country can move forward.” (More Zimbabwe stories.)