Regards, Ivan
Posted on 04/02/2005 3:44:24 PM PST by MadIvan
South African government observers yesterday gave President Robert Mugabe's victory in Zimbabwe's election a clean bill of health, endorsing his Zanu-PF party's grip on power which will enable him radically to alter the country's constitution.
The decision of Mr Mugabe's most important regional ally to endorse the results of Thursday's parliamentary election - in which Zanu-PF won an overwhelming majority of seats - came despite widespread complaints of electoral fraud and the opposition's total rejection of the outcome.
The group's leader, labour minister Membathisi Mdladlana, who weeks earlier predicted that it would be free and fair, declared that the landslide win by the Zanu-PF "reflected the will of the people".
Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the defeated Movement for Democratic Change, disputed the outcome. "We have rejected the results because we don't believe they reflect the will of the people," he said. "I don't think any sane person would endorse these elections. Today the world has seen the extent to which Mugabe is determined to hold on to power without due regard to the people."
According to final results released yesterday, the ruling party won 78 seats compared with 41 for the opposition MDC. One seat went to an independent candidate.
Mr Mugabe has the power to appoint another 30 MPs to the 150-seat chamber.
With a two-thirds majority, Mr Mugabe is set to change the constitution to ensure that the MDC never again fights a presidential election.
At the age of 81 and with his term in office due to expire in 2008, Mr Mugabe and his lieutenants want the constitution altered so that should he step down, or die, one of his Zanu-PF deputies would take the post of president, instead of an election being required.
Before the poll, a senior Zanu-PF leader told The Telegraph on condition of anonymity: "We don't want to have to fight Morgan Tsvangirai in 2008."
However, this newspaper has learnt that the MDC leader has decided against mounting a legal challenge to the result, since the High Court refused even to consider clear evidence of vote-rigging and electoral fraud in the equally disputed 2002 presidential poll.
With the higher courts overwhelmingly staffed by judges bribed by gifts of the most fertile white-owned farms, Mr Tsvangirai did not expect justice then or now, allies said.
The near-demolition of the MDC will make it possible for the Zanu-PF regime to keep its machine of repression in place, continuing to deploy tens of thousands of intelligence operatives, policemen and Zanu-PF militants within party security structures to prevent spontaneous or planned opposition protests.
In spite of this, MDC polling agents have begun providing details of breaches of the election laws after a peaceful polling day and only limited violence before the poll.
A repeated complaint is that local officials were not allowed to release results from polling stations as the Electoral Act requires. Instead, policemen used radios to pass results to the secretive National Logistics Committee in Harare, a body staffed by Mr Mugabe's cronies, where they were supposedly being collated.
This led to delays of up to 12 hours before results were released and it is here that Mr Tsvangirai believes most of the manipulation took place.
"We had no access to that committee, nor did the observers," he said. South African observers admitted at their media briefing that they did not visit the committee - and that they did not know it existed.
The extent of Mr Mugabe's victory has left the MDC with few practical options and there was increasing despair among the party's senior leaders.
Mr Tsvangirai is in an unenviable position. He knows the evidence of his victory in 2002 is in box files gathering dust on shelves in his lawyer's library and that he will not be given a chance to fight again in 2008.
For five years he has struggled to keep a lid on groups of youths, mostly in urban areas, who believe that the ballot box has failed them and see violence as their only option. He also knows that the MDC is heavily in debt.
Some hard-core veterans of five years of detentions and torture are discussing, among themselves, whether to break ranks with MDC policy and go for targeted acts of violence.
Some are unwilling to wait for Mr Mugabe either to die or step aside for his chosen and obedient successor - the vice president, Joyce Mujuru - and see what happens. "The MDC failed us although we know it was impossible to defeat Zanu-PF as they control everything," said a man in his early 20s who has seen the inside of more police cells than any of the party's leadership.
"We know we cannot even discuss this with the leaders because they are determined to keep to non-violence, but we have nothing to lose."
Such opposition activists have no faith that the MDC could or would organise the peaceful "uprising" that was suggested by Zimbabwe's outspoken Catholic Bishop Pius Ncube, if Mr Mugabe won last week.
Topper Whitehead, an activist and veteran of the two previous violent elections said yesterday: "If I had access to the ballot boxes it would take me five days to find out how Zanu-PF manipulated the numbers.
"If they allowed the MDC the electronic version of the voters' roll I would uncover it in 24 hours."
Statisticians at the University of Zimbabwe say the voters' roll of 5.8 million, or almost half the population, may be overstated by more than a million.
Police set up checkpoints on the roads leading to Harare to contain possible trouble, but in the capital there were no signs of demonstrations - or celebrations - over the outcome.
Streets bustled with people shopping and going to work, reflecting a mood of widespread weariness with politics in a nation that is beset by crippling unemployment and inflation.
Regards, Ivan
Ping!
Funny how Comrade Mugabe didn't want expatriates to vote.
All those folks living overseas...and beyong the grasp
of his thugs...would have sent Zimbabwe's very own
Dear Leader packing.
Another petty dictator tramples on democracy.
I'm surprised Jimmuh wasn't there, giving Mugabe's victory his endorsement.
Look, I am eternally grateful for Tony Blair's alliance in the War against Terrorism. But Britain has needed for years to get off its sorry butt and give Mugabe the heave ho.
My guess is the people of Zimbabwe heard what a joyous experience starvation is, and went with the guy most likely to bring it about.
Tsvangirai has said the election was marked by fraud, fear and intimidation — an assessment echoed by the United States, Britain and other Western nations.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice accused Mugabe of policies "designed to repress, crush and otherwise stifle expressions of differences in Zimbabwe."
Tsvangirai, who has accused Mugabe, 81, of rigging previous elections in 2000 and 2002, hinted on Friday his supporters may take their anger to the streets rather than attempt to fight the result in court.
That's the efficient solution - tyrannicide!
Amen, some people jus need killin!
Isn't Oprah a friend of his?
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