HARARE, Zimbabwe – On the surface, the process looked fair: Zimbabweans lined up peacefully and cast ballots yesterday in a parliamentary election President Mugabe wants to vindicate his nearly 25-year rule.

But opposition leaders and independent groups said the poll was stacked in Mr. Mugabe’s favor. Intimidation was rife, the electoral roll was in shambles and large numbers were unable to cast ballots, they said.

“We are not happy with the way the electoral playing field has been organized, and I think we all agree, on all benchmarks, this is not going to be a free and fair election,” opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai said as he cast his ballot.

Under international pressure to produce a credible result, Mr. Mugabe’s government and party stanched the bloodletting that has plagued previous elections in this southern African country. For the first time in years, Mr. Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change party was able to campaign openly.

Mr. Mugabe was confident the gamble would pay off, saying he was “entirely, completely, totally optimistic” of victory for his Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front. He said he voted only to increase the margin of the win.

However, encouraged by the drop in violence, Mr. Tsvangirai held out hope his party could muster enough support to claim Parliament.

The Movement for Democratic Change won 57 of Parliament’s 120 elected seats in the last parliamentary election in 2000, despite what Western observers called widespread violence, intimidation, and vote rigging. But it lost six seats in subsequent by-elections. Mr. Mugabe appoints an additional 30 seats, virtually guaranteeing his party a majority.

In 2002, Mr. Tsvangirai was narrowly declared loser of a flawed presidential poll. Mr. Mugabe accuses British Prime Minister Blair and other Western leaders of backing the 6-year-old Movement for Democratic Change, the first party to seriously challenge his rule since he led Zimbabwe to independence in 1980. He dubbed yesterday’s vote the “anti-Blair election,” and opposition supporters “traitors.”

“My vote today will be a vote for Zimbabwe’s sovereignty,” said Thomas Mseruka, a 46-year-old carpenter and government supporter who voted in a neighborhood of dilapidated apartment buildings in Harare.

During the voting yesterday, police arrested two British journalists covering the election. The Sunday Telegraph’s chief foreign correspondent, Toby Harnden, and its photographer, Julian Simmonds, were at a polling station south of the capital when they were arrested, the paper said. The paper’s spokeswoman refused to comment on press reports that the pair were accused of working without accreditation.

The opposition has countered that Mr. Blair didn’t run in yesterday’s election, which it said was about Mr. Mugabe’s failings. Zimbabwe’s economy has shrunk 50% over the past five years. Unemployment is at least 70%. Agriculture – the country’s economic base – has collapsed, and at least 70% of the population lives in poverty.

“I think it is time that somebody else took control of the country and do a better job to ensure that those like me actually get jobs,” said Ketae Dikit, 31, a vegetable vendor.

Opposition leaders blame the economic woes on the government’s often violent seizure of thousands of white owned commercial farms for redistribution to black Zimbabweans.