Nearly three months since the elections in Zimbabwe and the winner is still not in power. Morgan Tsvangirai won the Presidential election and although his MDC party were able to cling onto the gains they made in Parliament, Robert Mugabe is not giving the Presidency up easily, forcing the country to go through another election campaign which he will undoubtedly stitch up. Few doubt that this time Mugabe will get it right and sufficiently terrorise the population to ensure that they vote the right way. Against this backdrop Mugabe then turns up in Rome at a UN conference on Food, pretending to be a legitimate politician, in complete contravention of the EU ban on him entering Europe.
He is repeating the tactics I saw when I was an election observer there in 2002. On that occasion his forces set out to intimidate MDC supporters to such an extent that they were driven off their land and away from their homes. When they subsequently tried to re-register with the authorities in a new area, away from the terror, they were banned from voting. Mugabe used this tactic to great effect in 2002 and it is happening again right now.
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