Ballot boxes were being delivered across Zimbabwe today on the eve of parliamentary polls as President Robert Mugabe insisted the ballot, derided by international observers as a pseudo-election, would be 'free and fair'.

The 81-year-old veteran leader is hoping for a two-thirds majority for his ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF) party in the parliamentary elections to enable him to invoke a series of constitutional changes.

At his final campaign rally in Harare today, attended by some 3,000 supporters, Mr Mugabe condemned black people who vote for the resurgent opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), as "traitors".

In comments which have added to concern as tensions rise in the run-up to the election, he described Morgan Tsvangiri, its leader, as a "big-headed man with no brain".

A coalition of human rights groups has warned that despite the unprecedented peace of the campaign, which marks a major shift from the elections five and three years ago when scores were killed and beaten in political violence, vote-rigging and intimidation were still likely to skew the result which is already heavily weighted in Zanu-PF's favour.

In order to win, the MDC would have to gain 76 of the 120 contested seats compared to only 46 for Zanu-PF, which can again rely on 30 presidential appointments to cement its majority in parliament.

Some 500 international observers, including teams from the South African government, parliament and ruling ANC, the regional Southern African Development Community and the African Union have deployed across Zimbabwe to monitor the poll in an attempt at international credibility.

The European Union whose election observers have been banned from the country, called the vote "a sham" and a "pseudo-election", with Luxembourg's junior foreign minister, Nicolas Schmidt, saying that the Europeans were "worried and shocked" by the campaign.

For his final campaign rally, Mr Tsvangirai, the MDC leader, travelled to eastern Zimbabwe to meet supporters in the Chimanimani district where Heather Bennett, the wife of the jailed opposition lawmaker Roy Bennett, is running for the seat. His speech focused on the parlous state of the nation's economy.

On Sunday the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Bulawayo, Pius Ncube, called for a "non-violent mass popular up rising" if Zanu-PF won the general election by fraud.

Brian Kagoro of the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, an umbrella group of 350 organisations, was more optimistic about the fairness of the election.

While noting that fear and initimidation remain part of Zimbabwe politics he said that the absence of "overt violence" meant that there were more "citizens who will be brave enough to vote for the party of their choice".

"This is an election where I think any result is possible," Kagoro told a news conference.

The MDC, founded in 1999, entered the electoral contest last month saying that conditions were not ripe in the southern African country to hold a free and fair vote but that it would still field candidates to "keep the flames of change alive".

In the last parliamentary vote in 2000, the MDC picked up 57 seats while Zanu-PF got 62, but under Zimbabwe law, the president directly appoints 30 members of parliament, meaning that the ruling party was able to command a strong majority in parliament.

Polling opens at 7am tomorrow (0600 BST) and closes at 7pm with the counting of ballots to begin immediately afterwards. A result is expected with 48 hours.

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