Zimbabwe opposition claims huge poll win
I'll be astonished if the results are allowed to stand, but Morgan Tsvangirai is claiming that the opposition have "massacred" Mugabe's party in the Zimbabwean elections.
I've pointed out before that inflation in Zimbabwe is running at 100,000% according to government figures, although many believe it may be four times as high as that. Only one in five people have a job, so it's no surprise that Mugabe is being thrashed in an election, what will be surprising will be if he allows the result to stand, rather than - once again - outrageously claiming victory and using his thug police force to ensure that his false claim is made real.The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) defied a government ban on pre-empting the official announcement of the election results and released the count from polling stations that showed Tsvangirai beating the man who has ruled Zimbabwe for 28 years, even in the president's home territory of Mashonaland.
'We've won this election,' said Tendai Biti, the MDC's secretary-general. 'The results coming in show that in our traditional strongholds we are massacring them. In Mugabe's traditional strongholds they are doing very badly. There is no way Mugabe can claim victory unless it is through fraud. He has lost this election.'
I wish Tsvangirai well. Obviously, the best thing for Zimbabwe would be for Mugabe to accept his defeat and allow Tsvangirai to attempt to take steps to halt the dreadful slide towards becoming a failed state which Mugabe has driven that nation to.The government's electoral commission has yet to release the counts formally. But the MDC said that declarations posted at polling stations across Zimbabwe last night, and gathered from its agents observing the counts, showed Tsvangirai ahead of Mugabe in every province where results were available. The most dramatic gap was in Mashonaland West, where the MDC candidate had 88 per cent of the vote to the president's 12 per cent.
Even in rural areas, where Mugabe has traditionally commanded support, he was taking only half as many votes as Tsvangirai, according to the MDC. In Harare, the opposition candidate was pulling in three times as many votes as the president. It was not clear what proportion of the overall vote the results represented, but Biti claimed it was substantial and the trend was 'irreversible'.
He said the MDC was releasing the results ahead of the electoral commission to head off any attempt by the government to tamper with the figures when they are centrally collated, as they believe happened in the presidential election that Mugabe won by a narrow margin six years ago.
'We don't trust the electoral commission. It isn't independent. We made the mistake in 2002 of not claiming our victory,' he said. 'If they arrive at figures which are different, we will not accept that, pure and simple.'
However, I have no great faith that this is what Mugabe will allow.
The MDC's move came despite a warning by Zimbabwe's police chief, Augustine Chihuri, who said he will not permit the opposition to declare victory.This what they are up against, a police force who make no attempt to hide the fact that they see themselves as part of Mugabe's government and who openly make threats against the opposition party.
Mugabe's state run Herald newspaper is saying that Mugabe has won the election with 57% of the vote. This gives us some indication of how Mugabe is going to try and play this.
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