Secret Mugabe meeting ponders military move or fixed result - but not an admission of defeat

The results of the Zimbabwean elections are leaking out with what can only be described as a theatrical slowness. And there is every indication that the results are coming out so slowly because Mugabe has the sheer nerve to be preparing to name himself as Zimbabwe's next president.

A crisis meeting of Robert Mugabe's security cabinet decided to block the opposition from taking power after what appears to have been a comprehensive victory in Zimbabwe's elections but was divided between using a military takeover to annul the vote and falsifying the results.

Diplomatic and Zimbabwean sources who heard first-hand accounts of the Joint Operations Command meeting of senior military and intelligence officers and top party officials on Sunday night said Mugabe favoured immediately declaring himself president again but was persuaded to use the country's electoral commission to keep the opposition from power.

The commission began releasing a trickle of results yesterday, more than 36 hours after the polls closed, but the opposition Movement for Democratic Change said it believed the count was being manipulated.

This blatant fixing of the result is hardly a surprise, however one would hope that international pressure would be brought to bear on Mugabe and that South Africa especially would use it's influence to tell Mugabe that the game is up.

Independent monitors collating the count from polling booth returns say the MDC presidential candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, won about 55% of the vote and Mugabe 38%. The MDC also gained control of both houses of parliament, according to the monitors.

The MDC said the slow pace of releasing vote tallies - likely to take days at the present rate - was further reason to suspect they were being tampered with.

The speed with which the results are being delivered, alone, tells us that Mugabe has been thrown off course and is frantically trying to fix things in his own favour. It's interesting that reports are coming out that he has been persuaded from simply pulling off a military takeover, as I would have imagined this to have been the first place his mind went. It appears that others have persuaded him that the international community would object to this, so he has decided to slowly release the manufactured figures which gives him an unlikely victory.

Sources with knowledge of the JOC meeting said the Zanu-PF leadership was "in shock" after it was informed of the scale of the victory of the MDC's presidential candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai.

A senior diplomatic source who received accounts from two people privy to the JOC meeting said it discussed shutting down the count and Mugabe declaring himself re-elected or the army stepping in to declare martial law on the pretext of defending the country from instability caused by the opposition claiming victory.

"In the JOC meeting there were two options for Mugabe: to declare victory on Sunday or declare martial law," said the diplomat. "They did not consider conceding. We understand Mugabe nearly decided to declare victory. Cooler heads prevailed. It was decided to use the [election commission] process of drip, drip where you release results over a long period, giving the opposition gains at first but as time wears on Zanu-PF pulls ahead."

Another source said that some JOC members favoured a less hardline approach by reaching out to the opposition but were overruled.

The longer this drags on, the more it becomes clear what we are witnessing. Mugabe is not about to accept defeat and is going to declare himself victorious after allowing Tsvangirai some victories.

However, this will not be as easy as Mugabe appears to believe.

If the government does attempt to fix the result it will not go unchallenged. The election commission will have to substantially alter a large number of polling booth returns in order to overturn Tsvangirai's significant lead. But the MDC has photographed results declarations pinned to the doors of more than 8,000 polling stations. If the numbers announced by the election commission are different, the party says it will have indisputable evidence of fraud.

"Unlike previous elections no one can privatise the result as it is posted outside the stations," said the MDC's secretary general, Tendai Biti. "This country stands on a precipice. We still express our great misgivings about [the election commission's] failure to announce the results. It raises tension among the people that is fertilising an atmosphere of suspicion."

Britain is, of course, seen as the centre of all evil by the Zimbabwean regime, but Miliband is stating that Brown will be putting pressure on Thabo Mbeki, the South African leader, to recognise that Mugabe has been defeated.

I wish them luck with that, as I personally hold Mbeki responsible for allowing Mugabe to get away with murder. I have no great faith that Mbeki will now suddenly develop the strength to do what is right.

The initial celebrations which took place across Zimbabwe have stopped as people realise what is taking place. The question now isn't whether or not Mugabe will try to steal the election, the question is whether or not the world will allow him to do so.

So we watch and wait...

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Tags: Zimbabwe, Mugabe, elections, Morgan Tsvangirai, Thabo Mbeki