Word: tsvangirai
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Under the watchful eye of the regime's security services, Zimbabweans Friday voted in a single-candidate presidential "runoff" that will almost certainly extend Robert Mugabe's rule until 2014. Despite reports of a low turnout, the decision by opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai to withdraw last Sunday makes Mugabe's victory inevitable. In Zimbabwe, presidential terms last six years, so by the time he faces reelection again, Mugabe will be 90 and will have ruled his country for 34 years. Nevertheless, expectations are that after six more years of hyper-inflation, mass unemployment and brutal repression, the President will...
...Sunday, thousands of Mugabe supporters wielding clubs and pipes occupied a stadium in Harare where the M.D.C. was planning to hold its biggest rally of the campaign. Abandoning the rally and calling the press conference to announce he was pulling out, Tsvangirai appealed to the United Nations, African Union and the Southern African Development Community, a regional authority, to "intervene and stop the genocide." Intervention, though, is considered extremely unlikely...
...Zimbabwe's security forces and pro-government militias have rampaged across the country since Mugabe lost control of parliament and came in second to Tsvangirai in the country's first round of voting on March 29. That result, argued Mugabe, was a "mistake." Punishment was severe: the M.D.C. claims 70 of its supporters have been killed, thousands beaten and 25,000 displaced. More than 200 supporters are missing. M.D.C. party leaders have also been arrested - Tsvangirai has been detained repeatedly - and his No. 2. Tendai Biti, has been charged with treason, which can be a capital offence. Journalists have also...
...millions of Zimbabweans now depend on foreign food aid. Meanwhile, Mugabe and the generals who back him have become increasingly brazen about their contempt for democracy and the welfare of their own people. Several leading figures in the security forces vowed they would refuse to cede power to Tsvangirai even if he won an election...
...region, South Africa and its President, Thabo Mbeki, has been ineffective in its efforts to temper Mugabe's excesses. Zimbabwe will now most likely be left to rot behind a wall of international sanctions that will bite its people far harder than its leaders. "Our victory is certain," said Tsvangirai on Sunday. "It can only be delayed." As the people of Burma or North Korea would tell him if they could, under a dictatorship, delays can last a lifetime...