Then why call it an election?
Whatever we think of confrontation politics in the US, it’s nothing compared with certain other parts of the world. Like Zimbabwe.
A defiant President Robert Mugabe yesterday vowed he would ‘go to war’ if he lost the presidential run-off due to take place in less than two weeks.
Describing the opposition as ‘traitors’, he claimed Zimbabwe would never ‘be lost’ again. Speaking at the burial of a veteran of the independence war, Mugabe said he would never accept the Movement for Democratic Change taking over. ‘It shall never happen … as long as I am alive and those who fought for the country are alive,’ he said. ‘We are prepared to fight for our country and to go to war for it.’
So much for change there. The guy arrested the candidate for change. He declared a judge’s order invalid.
He is also accused of spreading false information for releasing the opposition’s own tally from the first vote in March.
Furthermore…
With the MDC leadership under constant harassment, voters being beaten and killed and what amounts to a curfew in some MDC rural strongholds, the likelihood of the 27 June run-off taking place in any meaningful way seems remote.
That has to be the journalistic understatement of the day.
Mugabe is running a ‘no way’ campaign.
The internationally-touted ‘third way’ – a Government of National Unity – has been met with stiff opposition from the military, Zanu-PF and many in the opposition who want no truck with Mugabe. Andrea Sibanda, of Matabeleland Freedom Party said: ‘Whoever is floating the idea of GNU with Mugabe and Zanu-PF must be coming from another planet. How does one unite with them when their hands are dripping with blood of their kith and kin?’
