NYT: Early Results in Zimbabwe Point to a Mugabe Victory

[DeepModem Mom]

Early Results in Zimbabwe Point to a Mugabe Victory
By MICHAEL WINES

Published: April 1, 2005


HARARE, Zimbabwe, April 1 - First results in Zimbabwe's national parliamentary elections pointed today to a victory for President Robert G. Mugabe's long-ruling ZANU-PF party, apparently dashing predictions by the political opposition that it would claim a large share of the 150-seat legislature.

Morgan Tsvangarai, the leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, or MDC, refused at a news conference this morning to say how many seats he believed his party would win. Instead, he charged that ZANU-PF had stolen the election through intimidation and vote-rigging.

Mr. Tsvangirai said that the party would not contest the result in court, as it did in 2000 and 2002 elections, which most outside observers called fraudulent. Instead, he appeared to leave open the prospect that he would urge his supporters to take to the streets in protest, saying that "Zimbabweans must defend their right to vote and they must defend their vote."

By midday today in Harare, the MDC had captured 31 of the 39 seats in which final results were announced. But that was expected; most of those contests were in urban areas like Harare and Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second-largest city, where the opposition enjoys its strongest support.

Some political experts with access to returns from elsewhere said that ZANU-PF, the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front, was effectively sweeping the vote in rural areas. If so, the ruling party might claim enough of the MDC's 51 seats to gain a two-thirds majority in the parliament - a goal Mr. Mugabe set for this campaign....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/01/international/africa/01cnd-zimbabwe.html?hp&ex=1112418000&en=c64aa89ab33a5d10&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[davidinalameda]

1. what an upset!

bet no one saw this coming

<sarcasm turned on heavy>

the man's a bloody dictator--every bit as bad as Saddam

why haven't we moved in to introduce democracy there--NO OIL!

[dpibel]

6. What do you suppose would happen

if you had to back up the hyperbolic statement, "the man's a bloody dictator--every bit as bad as Saddam"?

The standard cant, which I guess you are endorsing, is that S. Hussein was a mass murderer of gargantuan proportion. Can you please direct me to some source indicating that the same is true of Mugabe?

And would the democracy you favor introducing in Zimbabwe be about the same quality as the democracy the US introduced in Iraq? Ooops! They've already got that. So what did you have in mind?

Thanks.

[davidinalameda]

9. they're both mass murderers

what's your point?

I would have to admit that the "democracy" in Iraq is a step above the "democracy" in Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe is more along the lines of the Soviet Union

Iraq is more like Mexico when the PRI was still in total power--the other parties at least had an outside chance if the corruption wasn't too overwhelming

anyway, any dictator is just as bad as another one--I don't think you have shades of gray when it comes to things like this

http://www.zimbabwedemocracytrust.org/outcomes/details?contentId=1848

[PeaceProgProsp]

2. I wonder if MDC will pull a Ukraine-style protest.

[noonwitch]

4. I suspect Mugabe will have his opponent killed

"He's a mean sucker. He can have people killed. I can't do that." The late, great Coleman Young's assessment of Mugabe.

I think he's already tried to kill the guy running against him in the past. I hope Zimbabwe is free of Mugabe soon, he's done nothing for the people, and killed a whole lot of them.

[PeaceProgProsp]

5. Actually, I think it was the other way around.

In 2002, the opposition leader was arrested days before the election because they had a tape of him plotting to kill Mugabe. They booked him, let him run in the election, tried him later and aquitted him, probably because he was obviously set up by the Europeans running the MDC campaign.

The Europeans probably knew they wouldn't win the election so they hung out their guy to dry -- they were hoping Mugabe would kill him. It didn't happen.

[Spazito]

3. Wow, who'd a thunk it!!

Mugabe was such a 'long shot'. ROFLMAO

[dpibel]

7. Oh, that murderous thug!

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/218349_zimbabwe01.html?searchpagefrom=1&searchdiff=1

HARARE, Zimbabwe -- Zimbabwe's closely watched national legislative election drew a huge throng of generally peaceful voters yesterday, a turnout that some here said bodes well for the opposition forces' campaign to challenge President Robert Mugabe's 25-year grip on political power.

****

The very sort of thing we would expect from someone every bit as bad as Saddam Hussein. Imagine! An election with generally peaceful voters. What evil will Mugabe come up with next.

And before we here in the very source of democracy wax too wroth about the intimations of fraud, we might want to consider at least a light dusting, if not a full clean up, of our own electoral house.

[NoPasaran]

8. BBC: Mugabe's party sweeps to victory

So far the party has taken 40 seats, official results show - enough to guarantee Mr Mugabe's party will control the legislature.

Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has said "disgusting, massive fraud" had been committed in Thursday's polls.

President Mugabe, who has been in power for 25 years, has dismissed the complaints as nonsense.

The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has won 32 seats so far, mostly in urban areas, where it is strongest.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4399501.stm

[solinvictus]

10. Mugabe wins? Wow, who'da thunk it?