Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum organisations. It trained monitors initially for the Referendum on the draft Constitution. ZimRights was funded by the European Union to train 1 600 monitors and produced a manual for the monitors. 10 000 monitors were trained with US funding. By mid-May ZESN’s member-NGOs had trained 24 000 monitors for the election. Donor countries suggested that international monitors could be provided. This suggestion was rejected by the State President. Only international observers were permitted. A flurry of new electoral regulationslvi (1) required all monitors to be Zimbabwean citizens not affiliated to any political party; and all monitors and observers to be accredited by the Registrar-General’s Office (at a charge of US$100 for each international observer); (2) limited candidates to one polling agent per booth; and monitors to onelvii per polling station for the 4 000 stations; and (3) set up a restrictive Code of Conduct for Election Agents, Polling Agents, Monitors and Observers, with vastly increased (by 10-20 times) financial penalties for non-compliance. In (future) Presidential elections, candidates’ polling agents are no longer allowed to be present at the votecounting and their election agents are restricted to their own constituencies for vote-counting. The ESC took High Court action against the State President’s relocation of its responsibility for the accreditation of monitors to the Ministries of Home and Foreign Affairs and Information. Justice Chidyausiku ruled against the ESC, which, with the Legal Resources Foundation, appealed to the Supreme Court. The ESC was reported to be expecting to deploy 20 000 monitors before it was deprived of its major functions. The day before polling, not a single local monitor of the 20 000 trained by ZimRights and ZESN had been accredited. 16 000 were apparently approved within 12 hours of the start of polling, but - together with members of the Electoral Supervisory Commission itself - were later refused entry to polling stations because they lacked formal documentation signed by the National Elections Directorate, which seemingly displaced the ESC. By the day of polling, only 302 of 500 international observers had been accredited. 233 were rejected, including all UK and US diplomats - who were at the last minute permitted to observe; 61 foreign observers (African and European) for the Zimbabwe Council of Churches; 25 (six Zambians and 25 South Africans) for the Catholic Commissioner for Justice and Peace; 40 for the Electoral Commissions Forum of SADC; five from the Congress of South African Trades Unions (COSATU); and eight from Oxfam Canada. Following its earlier damning report, 40 NDI and US-based International Republican Institute observers were refused registration on the grounds that neither organisation fitted into three newly-defined categories. Also refused were the three major German funders, the Friedrich Neumann, Friedrich Ebert and Konrad Adenauer Foundations; and Pacenet (an African network of civic education groups). The European Union sent the largest group of 190 observers, 100 of whom were in Zimbabwe for three weeks before polling. They expressed serious concern at the conditions imposed on international observers, who were reportedly told not to visit the commercial farms invaded by the war veterans. They, in turn, were told, by the State President to stay on the farms until after the elections. The Commonwealth team of 44 was supposed to have been much larger, but 17 Nigerians and 14 Kenyans (all with extensive experience of flawed African elections) were deemed to be ‘British spies’ and refused accreditation. There were 29 observers from SADC, 24 from South Africa, and much smaller numbers from the ACP states, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Finland, Japan, New Zealand and Spain. A fortnight before polling, the United Nations pulled out its team. (The State President refused to allow it to co-ordinate the international election observers, notwithstanding the UN Secretary-General’s view that such an agreement had been reached.) During 25