Word: pf
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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...
...That request, the election commission's stalling and Zanu-PF's unhurried attitude towards resolving the crisis all seem to indicate Mugabe is playing for time. So, too, do reports quoting diplomats in Harare as saying that Mugabe may issue a presidential decree delaying a run-off between him and Tsvangirai for 90 days. More time would allow Mugabe to mobilize his shock troops-the so-called "veterans" who overran white-owned farms in the late 1990s and early years of this century...
...fear now is that the regime will encourage the veterans to deploy to opposition strongholds across the country. Just where those bastions are located is now all too obvious in the results posted on the sides of polling stations across Zimbabwe. "Our guys voted Zanu-PF, which was a disappointment," said the South Africa-based brother of one white farmer who has held onto his land in northern Zimbabwe. "But in hindsight, it's a blessing in disguise. The next-door farm voted M.D.C., and those guys are pretty worried...
...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...