Redstate

By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in Begone I Say And Let Us Have Done With You | Foreign Affairs | Robert Mugabe | Zimbabwe — Comments (2) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

I suppose that after all of this time, it should come as no surprise that the Mugabe regime was going to try to steal the presidential election in Zimbabwe. But the regime doesn't have to be so unbelievably obvious about it:

Zimbabwe's tortuous electoral process lurched into another phase on Friday as the much-maligned Zimbabwe Electoral Commission cut short what it called a "verification" of presidential election results by candidates in the March 29 ballot and their agents, announcing the first-round results and calling for a presidential runoff election.

Opposition representatives present for the "verification" process expressed outrage and stalked out of the proceedings at the Harare International Conference Center, the focus of attention during immediate post-election vote tallies which stretched out for weeks leading to the sudden unveiling of presidential results this week.

The electoral commission said opposition candidate Morgan Tsvangirai had outpolled President Robert Mugabe with 47.9% of ballots compared with 43.2%, declaring that Tsvangirai had nonetheless failed to surmount the hurdle of 50% plus one vote required to lock up the presidency in the first round, requiring a second.

Tsvangirai's representatives in the so-called "verification" exercise protested that they had not been allowed to challenge any of the commission's compilations. His party contends that he took at least 50.3% of first-round presidential votes.

As the story indicates, there is some doubt over whether the MDC will contest the runoff election. I can't believe that it wouldn't; in the current environment, failing to contest the runoff election would be tantamount to giving Robert Mugabe yet another term.