Zimbabwe 2008 Elections

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Look at this. Robert Mugabe has become an American Republicrat-type politician.

‘Those who want to vote for Tsvangirai can do so and waste their votes’

http://www.thetimes.co.za/News/Article.aspx?id=732448

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The MDC claims to have won a landslide victory.

I think it's fairly obvious that, should the elections be free and fair, Tsvangirai will be President of Zimbabwe. But then the same would have been the case had the 2002 elections not been rigged and MDC supporters not been intimidated with violence. Of course, anti-Mugabe sentiment is so high that this alone won't do, they'd probably have to resort to other tactics.

On which note, I suspect that Simba Makoni was a Zanu-PF plant to split the opposition vote; bearing in mind that in this election people are voting against Mugabe, more than anything.

I don't exactly buy that, cause if the opposition vote split, Mugabe still needed a majority to avoid a runoff, and what's the difference between rigging an election to get 50% in a two-way election or a three-way election in all honesty?

Here's a Zimbabwe diaspora message board discussing the election: some are hardcore MDC, some are hardcore pro-Mugabe, some want to start a war if the result doesn't go their way, and some are spreading crazy rumors like what Citzen Al posted about.

http://newzim.proboards86.com/index.cgi?board=general

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It is definitely a shame, even disgraceful, that South Africa and other neighbouring countries have done little to nothing to stop the human rights abuses in Zimbabwe.

They're p*ssies. What did you expect?

From The Times of South Africa.

http://www.thetimes.co.za/News/Article.aspx?id=736745

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From an Indian cricket writer writing for the Times of India, recounting his 2003 trip in Zimbabwe at the Cricket World Cup then.

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/04/04/wzim304.xml

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D'oh!

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Rumors (yes, I know a lot have been spreading) that there has been a bloodless military coup.

To be bluntly honest, considering Mugabe's absence and that the African Union says they can't even get in touch with him, it makes sense to me.

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So... what happened?

The Election Commission continues to decline to release results. In other words, Mr Tsvangirai has either won outright, or hasn't by such a ridiculously small margin that no one's going to be convinced he didn't.
ZANU-PF and the Election Commission are really hitting themselves for thinking they didn't need to forge the election results, and now it's probably too late. So they're just trying to sit this out. The African Union is probably trying to broker something, but I can't see what.

The Southern African Development Commission are having an extraordinary summit today, called and hosted by the Zambian president on Zimbabwe. Mugabe has declined to go and Tsvangirai will be going. Mbeki met with Mugabe on his way to Zambia and said there is no crisis in Zimbabwe currently.
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Nothing has yet come out of what the SADC summit has determined. A lot of Zimbabweans on a board I'm reading for the election crisis feel Mbeki is selling them out.

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Yeah, but they clearly did win outright in the real election results.

If MDC doesn't take power it's not really worth a s*** is it?