HARARE, March 7 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – Zimbabwe's main opposition party went to court to contest last-minute changes by President Robert Mugabe to the election law, two days before voting begins.

Mugabe used presidential powers to reinstate election regulations that the Supreme Court declared illegal last week and which critics said favored his re-election bid.

The controversial General Laws Amendments Act gives state-appointed election officers power to bar independent vote monitors, to introduce strict identity requirements for voters and ban private organizations from voter education.

The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) also renewed its accusations that Mugabe is trying to rig the poll - but opposition representatives still maintain their candidate can win, news agencies reported.

Meanwhile, Zimbabwean officials failed to reveal details of the voting arrangements just three days ahead of the poll.

At a briefing for overseas election observers and the media on Wednesday, there was a barrage of questions for Sobuza Gula-Ndebele, a retired army colonel who chairs the Electoral Supervisory Commission (ESC).

However, he was unable to give an answer to many of the questions raised.

At the Harare briefing, Gula-Ndebele and other key electoral officials were unable to say how many ballot papers had been printed for the weekend voting, reported BBC’s online news service.

There was no information on the exact location of 4,548 polling stations. Analysts say that an imbalance of polling stations towards the countryside compared with the cities would give Mugabe - who is stronger in rural areas - a built-in advantage. Gula-Ndebele also did not say when voters' lists would be made public, BBC's online news service reported.

In a separate related development, more than 600 whites went to court in the second city of Bulawayo on Wednesday seeking the right to vote in the March 9-10 balloting.

A lawyer representing some of the group told Commonwealth Observer Group chairman Abdulsalami Abubakar that authorities had struck the 650 mostly elderly white Zimbabwe residents off the voters' roll, British daily newspaper, The Independent reported.

Presidential elections, to start next Saturday, pose the toughest challenge Mugabe has ever to face since he became leader after independence from Britain in 1980, the Independent said.

According to the newspaper, analysts and observers closely related to the Zimbabwe affair believe the coming election involves much deeper conflicts than what appears on the surface so far.

"It is not just a matter of democracy and human rights as stated by the British Premier, following the Commonwealth meeting, during which he, alongside other colleagues from Canada, Australia and New Zealand, failed to impose symbolic sanctions on Mugabe’s regime," Mohammad Ashour, an Egyptian analyst, told IslamOnline.

Many of Africa's professionals and intellectuals are as critical of Mugabe as Western countries. However, motives in both cases are poles apart.

The West, led by former colonist power in Zimbabwe (Britain), started to move against Mugabe only after their interests have been threatened.

Three years ago, Mugabe effectively ran a one-party state, having long ago swallowed his main opponent and splintered any other dissent. Yet, that drew no criticism from the West.

Months before parliamentary elections in June 2000, Mugabe’s party was almost sure to lose the elections. Mugabe’s popularity itself has taken a sharp dive. He made use of a very sensitive and delicate matter, farms owned by whites, most of them British.

He encouraged veteran warriors to take over those white-owned farms, and they did. Only then did the West started moving against Mugabe and his regime, claiming democracy and human rights were in danger.

Now Mugabe, a former guerrilla leader, is locked in a battle for his political survival against a party that shot to prominence less than six months after its creation.

In September 1999, MDC transformed itself from a pressure group headed by labor union leaders into a political party that managed to slap Mugabe with his first defeat at the ballot box only five months later.

Their success in defeating a government-backed constitution in a national referendum was a watershed moment in Zimbabwean politics.

After the February 2000 referendum, the MDC went on to win 57 of the 120 contested seats in June parliamentary elections, taking away Mugabe's rubber stamp and forcing debate - but rarely defeat - of government proposals.