Having insufficiently rigged the first round of voting, Mugabe is determined not to make the same mistake again:
Zimbabwe was bracing itself yesterday for the possibility that President Robert Mugabe, forced into an expected election runoff against his opposition challenger Morgan Tsvangirai, could mobilise an army of thugs to beat, intimidate and terrify voters, while taking emergency powers to vary the electoral regulations so as to make ballot-stuffing easier.
Both Britain and the United States are exercising strong diplomatic pressure on Mugabe not to follow this route. But some diplomatic observers believe that it may be the ageing despot’s only way of keeping his vow to die in State House.
Mugabe’s deputy information minister, Bright Matonga, who claimed last week that the president’s Zanu-PF party had let him down in the first round of voting, predicted a resounding victory in the second, saying: “We only applied 25% of our energy in the first round. That [the runoff] is when we are going to unleash the other 75%.”
(Via Instapundit.)
Oh dear, the first round was only 25% rigged?
Also, an explanation of why the official results matter; not because of the tally, but because the runoff can’t be scheduled until they’re released:
The official tally has yet to be declared and when MDC lawyers went to the High Court yesterday in an attempt to force an announcement, their way into the building was blocked by police from Mugabe’s office over the road. One of the lawyers, Alec Muchadehama, said the police had threatened to shoot them. The case was eventually postponed until today.
The longer the delay in announcing the presidential election result, opposition activists say, the more time Mugabe will have to mobilise his forces.
Reports yesterday suggested that attempts to intimidate the opposition could already be under way. According to one African news agency, Zimbabwean soldiers beat supporters of the MDC in some parts of the country to punish them for “premature” election victory celebrations. At least 17 people were said to have been beaten so badly that they had to be taken to hospital.
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