Big Govt victory predicted in Rhodesian election

Press, 1 September 1977, Page 8

Big Govt victory predicted in Rhodesian election

NZPA-Reuter

Salisbury

White Rhodesians began voting yesterday in the snap General Election which is expected to give the Prime Minister (Mr lan Smith) the mandate he seeks to negotiate his own concept of a settlement on majority rule in Rhodesia.

Voting began at 7 a.m. yesterday (5 p.m. yesterday, N.Z. time) and was due to end at 7 p.m. (5 a.m. this morning, N.Z. time), marking, the start of one of the most decisive phases in Rhodesia’s 12-year history as a breakaway British colony. Today British and American envoys will arrive to present the latest AngloAmerican proposals to end the guerrilla war and transfer power from the 270,000 whites to the six million blacks.

But these proposals appear destined to be rejected in Salisbury as lacking entrenched safeguards for the whites.

“At no time in our history have we been faced with greater perils,” Mr Smith said on radio and television on the eve of voting. Mr Smith appealed for a solid vote for his Rhodesian Front Party, to show the Anglo-American group that white Rhodesia was strong and united and that it would not “participate ir any plan

that will lead to our own destruction.” Barring a major upset, opinion polls suggest that Mr Smith will win his mandate and be able to greet the British Foreign Secretary (Dr David Owen) and the U.S. envoy (Mr Andrew] Young) today as a Prime] Minister with a strengthened! hand. Mr Smith also seeks a two-thirds majority in the 66-seat House of Representatives required for major constitutional change. The Rhodesian Front lost this margin when 12 of its Rightwing members rebelled over legislation to scrap much racial discrimination. The defectors formed the Rhodesian Action Party which fought the election on a platform of continued white supremacy and a ruthless prosecution of the bush war.

The latest opinion poll last Friday gave the Rhodesian Front more than 57 per] cent of the vote, the R.A.P.! taking almost 4 per cent and

the Liberal National Unifying Force, which would accept the Anglo-American plans as a basis for negotiation, 2.2 per cent. If these percentages are followed nationally the Rhodesian Front, which now has 38 seats will take all 50 European places in Parliament, eliminating the R.A.P. members. But it could not be ruled out that the predominantly white electorate might return Opposition candidates in some constituencies.

Of 172,000 adult whites, 7500 Coloured (mixed races) and 5200 Asians officially counted in June last year, about 25,406 have not registered to vote, either because they do not qualify or because they have not troubled to take part in what most regard simply as an exercise in white power politics. Blacks may vote only for eight of 16 black seats. The other eight black M.P.s are selected by tribal electoral colleges.