"Tied" in Zimbabwe

The first official election results show Mugabe's ZANU-PF and the opposition tied in the Parliamentary elections, while a major Mugabe crony - "Justice Minister" Patrick Chinamasa - lost his seat.

Could Robert Mugabe really be losing his rigged election? Among ordinary Zimbabweans, there's no doubt about who really won:

A sheet of blue paper hanging on the notice board of a drab community hall told the tale of a remarkable upset:

President Robert Mugabe: 3,066 votes.

Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai: 8,154 votes.

For 28 years, Chinhoyi was part of Mugabe's hammerlock on rural Mashonaland, a region where his outsize victories helped balance out his eroding support in Zimbabwe's major cities. But evidence abounded Sunday that this pattern had collapsed across the nation, leaving Mugabe vulnerable to a historic defeat.

The electoral commission remained silent more than 24 hours after polls closed, but Zimbabweans took it upon themselves to tabulate results on pieces of paper gradually appearing outside 9,000 polling stations across the country.

The growing mosaic of information, though informally collected, suggested Mugabe was decisively trailing Tsvangirai. The opposition party claimed it was a landslide.

If Mugabe leaves office voluntarily, it will be the first decent thing he's done in recent memory. I can't see it happening - but I didn't foresee election results like this, either. We might really be seeing an end to one of the worst man-made catastrophes of our age.

Damian P.

Posted by damian at March 31, 2008 10:22 AM