Wednesday Zimbabwe Blogging

I have paid approximately no attention to the election in Zimbabwe, but I have to agree with Dave Weigel that this is no way to rig an election:

President Robert Mugabe's party has lost its majority in parliament, the Zimbabwe Election Commission says. It says Mr Mugabe's Zanu-PF party has taken 94 of the 207 contested seats, while opposition parties have won 105. One seat has gone to an independent.

Matthew Weaver is running a Zimbabwe blog for the Guardian. Timothy Burke often has interesting things to say about Zimbabwe, and I've found the information in his March 28 post to be useful background. Going forward, part of the issue here, as it often is, is that Mugabe and other members of his regime will be much more willing to give up power if they think they'll be able to retire in peace. These kind of situations then pose a dilemma between the desire to find a peaceful and constructive solution to the conflict at hand, and the sense that there needs to be accountability for the crimes of the past.

Comments

What's he worried about? If a president does it, that means it's not illegal.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | April 2, 2008 2:26 PM

It's the presidential election that they're rigging. No results for that race have been officially released yet. The election was on Saturday.

Posted by neil | April 2, 2008 2:30 PM

Going forward, part of the issue here, as it often is, is that Mugabe and other members of his regime will be much more willing to give up power if they think they'll be able to retire in peace.

Exactly right. But as the Pinochet example (among others) shows, this is extremely unlikely. Once gives up his position, he has no power to affect whether he'll retire in peace, and there can be no assurance that other will let him retire in peace. That ship has, unfortunately, already sailed.

Posted by Al | April 2, 2008 2:32 PM

It's pretty clear that several years of very dangerous relations with North Korea were sparked by Bush's stupid "Axis of Evil Speech", which made Crazy Kim think we were getting ready to attack him.

It's also pretty clear that David Frum and his friends put North Korea in the "Axis" because they wanted to prove they weren't ONLY targeting Muslim countries hostile to Israel. It's called "tokenism".

Things would have worked out much better if they'd (by chance) decided to put Mugabe into the Axis instead of Kim. Nobody much cared about Mugabe, he wasn't popular, and he didn't have an army. I'd guess that we could have easily overthrown him with one well-armed platoon, though if we wanted to "play fair" or "make it interesting", we might have tried using just a single rifle squad.

It's hard to tell from the media, but I get the sense that at least something like 100K+ Zimbabweans have died of starvation or malnutrition over the last few years because of Mugabe's stupid and greedy policies, so it probably would have been worth risking the lives of that American platoon (or squad).

Posted by RKU | April 2, 2008 2:36 PM

The Mail & Guardian (South Africa) usually has quite excellent reporting on Zimbabwe and other regional matters.

http://www.mg.co.za

ShortWave Radio Africa is an independent Zimbabwean effort fighting government censorship & repression, but which still offers regular podcasts / downloads of news broadcasts, and listening to the reports often gives a closer feel for the situation than sometimes reading does.

http://www.swradioafrica.com/

Posted by El Cid | April 2, 2008 2:39 PM

I think this points to a problem in the International Criminal Court process - no room for political pardons.

The Security Council should have the right to issue prospective pardons which could be used as leverage to get thugs like Mugabe to resign.

Posted by Brian Schmidt | April 2, 2008 3:08 PM

Neil et al --

Obviously the Presidential results are where most rigging would have occurred --

But you can clearly see even the Assembly numbers have been rigged (prob. with an eye toward rigging the Pres. numbers later).

See http://www.zimelectionresults.com . Check Bulawayo - Bulawayo Central and you will clearly find they rigged 2,200+ ballots for the ZANU candidate in addition to the actual tally (note - he still lost. Further note -- it's not about these candidates, it's about claiming all those "voters" also "voted" for Mugabe that will come next -- They've rigged all previous election results, so they have a very good idea of the nuts-and-bolts of how to do it)

The reason they can't rig like previous elections is ZANU-PF (stupidly, it turns out) legislated a change at polling sites, where polling stations now post the local results at the polling station after the first count, for public view.

Those results have been sent as screen shots on cell phones from virtually every polling station throughout the country (this effort was, obviously, coordinated heavily by the opposition MDC Party so they could pre-empt the rigged results with the actual tallies), so actual tabulations of actual ballots is possible without waiting for rigged Zimbabwe Election Commission numbers.

The question now is whether Mugabe will stand for a run-off, will just stand down and hand to Mugabe, or will declare that the MDC has violated the constitution by declaring victory before the ZEC certified the results, throws Tsvangirai (MDC Pres. candidate) in jail and we're back at square one.

Posted by Miguel Pakalns | April 2, 2008 4:12 PM

Two points are relevant.

Parliament is hung. A minority party MDC AM with 5 seats will determine what gets done. Constitutional changes require a two-thirds vote, i.e. both major parties to agree.

The rules of the game allow ZEC till Friday to announce the results (6 days). I thought I heard, but it wasn't repeated in a summary, that there is a major recount happening tonight.

A lot of the parliamentary results might also go for a recount, if anyone can be bothered.

We are waiting now for the Presidential results and unequivocal statements of support/resignations from the service chiefs. A major difficulty is that there have been no announcements on TV within the country and the average person is dependent on the rumour mill.

Hopefully it will be over by tomorrow.

Posted by scotchcart | April 2, 2008 4:23 PM

The answer to this is easy, even if it ill likely upset some. They let these people retire in relative peace, and then they organize a hit squad to kill them.

It's called lying.

Problem. Solved.

Posted by soullite | April 2, 2008 4:30 PM

is that Mugabe and other members of his regime will be much more willing to give up power if they think they'll be able to retire in peace.

Not quite: the Mugabe patronage machine wants to keep its cash and prizes (including requisitioned land).

The twist here is that South Africa is the regional power, and it's going through a similar transition with Mbeki losing the ANC nomination to Zuma. The old guard may bow out, but the loyalists want not just a peaceful retirement but a bountiful one.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | April 2, 2008 8:28 PM

Peter Godwin gives some details on how a younger Mugabe used to do it:

Peter Godwin's election rigging details

Posted by PDX Pete | April 2, 2008 10:40 PM