JURU, Zimbabwe — The run-up to next week's parliamentary elections in Zimbabwe has been the least violent in decades, but the country's main opposition leader said Friday the vote will not be free and fair because of subtle intimidation and memories of brutality past.

Morgan Tsvangirai said his Movement for Democratic Change was nonetheless taking part in an attempt to find a solution to the economic and political crisis sparked five years ago, when the opposition movement seriously challenged President Robert Mugabe's party in the last race for the 150-seat parliament.

"The economy has collapsed by 50 percent over the past five years. There is massive unemployment, over 80 percent unemployment. The economic base, which is agriculture, has been destroyed," Tsvangirai said in an interview with The Associated Press after a campaign rally in this dusty township 35 miles northeast of the capital, Harare.

"A lot is at stake. The country has to find a national solution to the national crisis which has been with us," said Tsvangirai, a former trade union leader.

After the MDC's strong showing in 2000 — despite what independent observers called widespread violence and vote-rigging — Mugabe's regime began redistributing white-owned farms to black Zimbabweans in an apparent bid to rally support.

The often-violent land redistribution campaign and an accompanying crackdown on dissent plunged Zimbabwe into international isolation and political and economic crisis.

The European Union imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe's leaders after EU observers were kicked out of the country during the 2002 presidential campaign. The African Union endorsed a report criticizing violence and intimidation that marred the election.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has called Zimbabwe an "outpost of tyranny," along with Belarus, Iran, North Korea, Cuba and Myanmar.

Tsvangirai said he believes that among the reasons why this election has been comparatively peaceful was "the desire of the government, given its economic situation, to have some form of legitimacy." He even praised the police.

"The police have been generally very cooperative," he said. "In fact, I have noticed a very different attitude. A very different professional attitude to dealing with violence, either overt or covert."

The wish for violence-free elections, however, has not stopped intimidation of opposition supporters, Tsvangirai said.

"There's been a lot of this subtle ... intimidation that has been taking place that cause the residual fear," Tsvangirai said. "What we have tended to say to the people is forget about it, ignore it. Just go and vote. Vote your conscience, don't vote looking back. So, we have been encouraging that."

International human rights groups have drawn similar conclusions. Human Rights Watch issued a report Monday charging that while the campaign has been relatively peaceful, previous years of violence, intimidation and repression already have skewed the March 31 parliamentary election in favor of Mugabe's party.

"It cannot be a free and fair election. There are so many benchmarks for which we are very seriously off the mark," Tsvangirai said.

Only recently have state radio and television begun running opposition advertisements and covering their rallies in news bulletins. But media monitoring groups say the coverage is often slanted in favor of the ruling party, and the MDC recently received a letter saying that as of Sunday, the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Holdings, which operates the local television and radio, would no longer run the party's commercials.

Among other problems, the opposition charges the voter roll, which the government says holds 5.6 million names, contains names of dead people and those who gave false addresses.

"We've always said that the voters' roll is in shambles, that we don't have 5.6 million voters in this country. We probably have 3.6 million to 4 million voters," Tsvangirai said. "So, yes, we have been fighting the voters' roll in the courts and everywhere, but it appears it is a sacred document."

Tsvangirai noted the pockets of people who watched at a distance from the hundreds in the main crowd at his rally Friday. He charged local government officials could punish those identified as opposition supporters by, for example, denying vendors spots at local markets — and thereby means to eke out a living in an increasingly impoverished country.

"These are people who are afraid to come and be associated with the MDC," he said.