Word: pf
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...victories of South African President Thabo Mbeki's year-long backroom mediation between Robert Mugabe's regime and the opposition in Zimbabwe was an agreement that election results be posted outside polling stations. It was that concession to transparency by the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF) that prevented a centralized rigging of the March 29 general election, and allowed the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (M.D.C.) to unofficially claim victory in both the parliamentary and presidential elections. Now the fear is that those same lists will guide pro-Mugabe mobs on a campaign of violence...
...Zimbabwe Election Commission eventually endorsed the M.D.C.'s claim of victory in parliament, giving it 109 seats to Zanu-PF's 97. The commission still hasn't announced the presidential result, but the M.D.C. has declared that its leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, won 50.3% of the vote-an outright victory that would make a run-off unnecessary. The idea that the Zanu-PF might secretly concur with that assessment gathered strength Sunday when, with the Election Commission still sitting on the official tally, the ruling party demanded a recount...
...word: "Cheat." These are ominous signs for the despot who has ruled Zimbabwe for 28 years. But there are other, more urgent ones emerging elsewhere in the capital. The slow drip-feed of official results from the March 29 general election had shown, by Wednesday, that Mugabe's Zanu-PF party had lost its parliamentary majority as the opposition tally reached 105 of the 210 seats in parliament, compared with 94 for the ruling party. The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, staffed by Mugabe loyalists, has not released the presidential results, although the state-run Herald newspaper acknowledged that Mugabe had failed...
...than most electorates would stand for, but Zimbabweans had little redress. After the 1980 election that ended the white minority regime of Rhodesia and brought him to power, Mugabe created a kind of one-party democracy, in which elections and nominally independent state institutions were dominated by his Zanu-PF party, which beat opponents and rigged ballots, and where the organs of state, particularly the army and police, were loyal to the party rather than the people. Left with no means of redress as their homeland rotted, millions of Zimbabweans simply left the country...
Officially, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission has thus far released results for 131 out of the parliament's 210 seats. According to that preliminary count, Mugabe's Zanu-PF won 64 seats, while the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) won a total of 67. But five of those opposition seats went to a splinter faction that has broken off from the MDC and its leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, Mugabe's main rival...