PrintApril 1, 2008
Mugabe Refusing to Accept Election Results
If it were up to the people of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe would be on his way out of office. The election held last Saturday unofficially shows the tyrant being slaughtered by Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change party by more than a 2-1 margin.
But apparently, the Electoral Commission has hired people who are very, very slow counters. As of today, less than 50% of the vote has been counted and lo and behold, the two parties are locked in an exciting neck and neck race.
That's not the story told by the tally sheets gathered by the opposition party and western electoral observers. But Mugabe has never let a little thing like free and fair elections stand in the way of hus lust for power:
The sluggish pace of official results heightened fears that a massive fraud was under way to keep Mr Mugabe clinging to power. By the end of the day the handful of results released showed his Zanu (PF) party taking 31 seats and the opposition 35 in the 210-seat Parliament. Significant scalps included the Justice Minister, Patrick Chinamasa. No official results have been released in the presidential race.Just to show how democracy works in Zimbabwe, a region to the north is cut off from the capitol due to flooding. This must be where a cousin of Chicago's Mayor Daley lives because the oppostion claims to have discovered 1 million "ghost voters" come back to life in order to support Mugabe:
Curiously, each update of the results showed the two parties running neck and neck.
“Someone is playing games here,” a researcher for an election watchdog said. “These are not the first results as they randomly become available, as it should be. It looks like someone is deliberately spacing them in a crude attempt to placate suspicion.”
Diplomatic and opposition sources said that Mr Mugabe held a crisis meeting with his security chiefs on Sunday night at which they discussed how to deal with what appeared to be a crushing defeat. Options included declaring victory, stopping the count or declaring martial law.
Having the figures in the public domain will seriously complicate any attempt to rig the vote. But attention is turning to northern constituencies, cut off by flooding, that opposition and independent observers could not reach. The MDC claimed before the polls to have discovered more than a million “ghost voters” on northern electoral rolls – a figure that could be used to disguise ballot stuffing on a grand scale.Yes, I would say that a million vote "ballot stuffing" would be grand alright. Not even Daley would think so big when it came to voter fraud.
The next move is obviously Mugabe's. Pressure from the outside does little good because Zimbabwe is such an international pariah anyway. It is possible that he will declare himself the winner and then seek to put down the subsequent rioting and bloodshed with the still loyal army (Mugabe makes sure the army is fed and paid despite the 100,000% inflation).
But even the army might not save him this time. The people are desperate for change. And the possibility of outside help for the opposition from other African countries cannot be dismissed.
If Mugabe wishes to live, he may be forced to leave office and flee the country - a nation ruined so completely and thoroughly that it will be a decade recovering.
