Mugabe faces biggest battle
2008-04-03 07:06
Harare - President Robert Mugabe is
fighting to survive the biggest crisis of his 28-year rule after
losing control of Zimbabwe's parliament for the first time since
taking power after independence.
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change said Mugabe
had also been defeated in a presidential election last Saturday
and should concede defeat.
Mugabe's aides angrily dismissed the MDC claim, hinting the
opposition could be punished for publishing its own tallies
despite warnings this would be regarded as an attempted coup.
But a state-owned newspaper and projections by Mugabe's
ruling Zanu-PF party conceded that he had failed to win a
majority for the first time in 28 years.
Mugabe, known for his fierce and defiant rhetoric, has not
been seen in public since voting, despite speculation he would
make a television address on Tuesday night.
Mugabe won't leave
Harare's UN ambassador said Mugabe had no intention of
living outside Zimbabwe.
Asked by BBC television if he would go to another country to
spend his retirement, Boniface Chidyausiku said:
"Robert Mugabe is Zimbabwean. Born, bred in Zimbabwe. He has
lived his life to work for Zimbabwe. Why should he choose
another country?"
In final results of the election for parliament's lower
house, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) won 99 seats.
Mugabe's Zanu-PF won 97 seats and a breakaway MDC faction won
10. One independent candidate won a seat. The outcome of senate
vote will be issued next.
No official results have emerged in the presidential vote.
But all the signs are that Mugabe, a liberation war leader
still respected in Africa, is in the worst trouble of his rule
after facing an unprecedented challenge in the elections.
Widely blamed for economic collapse of his once prosperous
nation, Mugabe has faced growing discontent with the world's
highest inflation rate of more than 100 000 percent, a virtually
worthless currency and severe food and fuel shortages.
The opposition and international observers said Mugabe
rigged the last presidential election in 2002. But some analysts
say discontent over daily hardships is too great for him to fix
the result this time without risking major unrest.
The mainstream MDC faction said its leader Morgan Tsvangirai
had won 50.3% of the presidential vote and Mugabe 43.8% according to its own tallies.
Call for patience
Zimbabwe's state-run Herald newspaper said Zanu-PF and the
MDC's Tsvangirai faction had agreed that their candidates or
chief election agents would be present at the start of the
presidential vote count once results come in from provinces.
"We therefore would like to urge the nation to remain
patient as we go through this meticulous verification process,"
the newspaper's website quoted Zimbabwe Electoral Commission
chief elections officer Lovemore Sekeramayi as saying.
Jonathan Moyo, Mugabe's former information minister and an
independent parliament member, said authorities were not coping
with defeat and chiefs of security forces, who have said they
would not accept an opposition victory, were anxious.
"You have generals who unwisely, or rather foolishly, told
the world that they would only salute one candidate, who
happened to have lost the election," he told reporters.
Analysts said the president was likely to be humiliated in a
runoff and the parliamentary vote defeat would remove some of
his power of patronage - a plank of his long and iron rule.
Mugabe's spokesman, George Charamba, said the MDC was in
contempt of the law by announcing results. "You are drifting in
very dangerous territory and I hope the MDC is prepared for the
consequences," he said.
The government appears to have been preparing the population
for a runoff by revealing its own projections showing a second
round would be required in the statutory three weeks after last
Saturday's vote.
Both Tsvangirai and the government have dismissed widespread
speculation that the MDC was negotiating with Zanu-PF for a
managed exit for Mugabe, who has ruled uninterrupted since
independence from Britain in 1980.
Mugabe was unlikely to make a negotiated exit but go down
fighting in the second round, analysts said.
"He is not the type that quietly walks away into the
sunset," a senior Western diplomat said in Harare.
- Reuters