HARARE, Zimbabwe -- Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe can't take anything but victory from Friday's run-off in which he is the only candidate.
But after a day of intimidation and poor turnout, his argument before Africa and the world that he should stay in power will be further weakened.
Marshals led voters to polling stations for a run-off that has been internationally discredited, bands of government supporters harassed people in the street and rural voters faced arson threats.
Opposition Leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who withdrew from the run-off against Mugabe after intense state-sponsored violence, said the results would "reflect only the fear of the people."
"What is happening today is not an election. It is an exercise in mass intimidation," he said at a news conference.
World leaders roundly condemned the vote.
"Today's election is a sham," EU spokeswoman Krisztina Nagy said in Brussels, Belgium.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, speaking at a meeting in Japan, said the United States would raise possible sanctions with other members of the UN Security Council.
In Ottawa, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Canada was set to impose diplomatic sanctions, calling Zimbabwe's vote "an ugly perversion of democracy."
"Our government has condemned the corrupt vote in the strongest possible terms," Harper told a meeting of B'nai Brith International on Friday. "We are working with the international community to bring in strong measures to pressure the Mugabe regime which has illegitimately stolen the election."
Zimbabwe was the topic of lengthy, closed-door discussions Friday in Egypt among foreign ministers gathered ahead of an African Union summit that begins Monday. Mugabe has said he will attend.
Some AU members say the run-off should not have been held, while others, such as regional powerhouse South Africa, refuse to publicly criticize Mugabe even on that point.
"Our position is that the parties in Zimbabwe should work together for the future of Zimbabwe," South African Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma told Associated Press Television News.
However, the head of South Africa's African National Congress Jacob Zuma, in one of the few times a senior South African politician openly criticized Mugabe, said the situation in Zimbabwe was "extremely difficult and distressing."
"We reiterate that the situation is now out of control," he said in Johannesburg, South Africa Friday. "Nothing short of a negotiated political arrangement will get Zimbabwe out of the conflict it has been plunged into."
Also Friday, presidents of the five-country East African Community made a rare political comment about the affairs of another African country at the end of a regular summit held in Kigali, Rwanda.
In a joint statement the presidents of Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda said Zimbabwe's one-candidate run-off, "cannot be a solution," to the country's political crisis.
-- Associated Press / Canadian Press
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