Mugabe's going down

Even the official (rigged) election results show the tyrant losing:

The ruling party's grip on Zimbabwe appeared to be loosening Tuesday as official results showed a modest but widening lead for the opposition from last weekend's election.

There were numerous but conflicting and unconfirmed reports of possible negotiations between President Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai. These were vigorously denied by several opposition party officials, including Tsvangirai spokesman George Tshibotshiwa.

"It's not true," he said. "We are not in talks with anybody."

Tsvangirai was due to appear at a news conference, his first since Saturday's election, on Tuesday night.

As results continued to trickle in, the two leading opposition groups, both called the Movement for Democratic Change, had won 67 seats in Zimbabwe's parliament, compared to 64 for Mugabe's ruling party.

In addition, a monitoring group suggested Monday that Tsvangirai defeated Mugabe this past weekend in the first round of a national vote, creating the biggest threat to Mugabe's grip on power in 28 years of unbroken rule.

Although full official results remained mysteriously unannounced, the Zimbabwe Election Support Network, an independent observation group, said that a statistical model drawing on a sample of posted vote tallies showed that Mugabe got 41.8 percent of the vote, compared with 49.4 percent for Tsvangirai. An independent, Simba Makoni, got 8 percent, the group found.

If confirmed, the monitor group's numbers would push Mugabe and Tsvangirai into a runoff vote -- something analysts have long said would consolidate opposition to the president and hasten the end of his rule. Zimbabwe election laws require that a winning candidate get more than 50 percent of the vote. The new election likely would be April 19.

Mugabe still has plenty of time to declare martial law, or frantically cook the numbers further. But the people of Zimbabwe know how they voted, and I really don't think they will sit back and take it.

They don't seem to be as afraid of Mugabe as they once were - and if a dictator can no longer keep his people in line through fear, he's done.

Damian P.

Posted by damian at April 1, 2008 12:27 PM