The vote recount has been released and they confirmed the initial results. Whether Mugabe will respect the results is another question.
For the first time in 28 years, the opposition had wrested a parliamentary majority from President Robert Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF in March 29 polls, triggering a recount of 23 out of 210 constituencies.
The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission said 14 out of the 23 seats had been recounted so far, and the original result was confirmed in all of them.
These are people who don't just talk about democracy and ignore it, they live democracy. No flashy photos of inked fingers and no seats of honor at the State of the Union address. Just real people taking real initiative in the face of a violent dictator. Unlike Iraq where democracy is hardly of interest to anyone, the US included, the Zimbabwe opposition is standing firm in the face of a aggressive and often violent 'police' action. Can you imagine what we would see if the Chinese weapons had arrived?
Riot police in Zimbabwe yesterday raided the offices of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change as well as those of independent election observers, seizing computers and documents and arresting scores of people in the biggest crackdown since last month's disputed election.
Truckloads of officers surrounded the building in Harare during an operation that lasted several hours. MDC officials said police had taken away more than 100 people, including staff and party supporters who had fled to the capital to avoid a crackdown in the countryside.
Turned away from South Africa and Mozambique, the Chinese weapons ship stuffed with military equipment for Robert Mugabe, is heading towards Namibia or Angola. The US is reportedly asking countries to deny access or refuse unloading though the Bush administration has struggled with diplomacy, especially in Africa. Because the US does have a special trading status with Angola you would expect that might provide some leverage though when is the last time the US negotiated anything that threatened an oil business relationship? How often does the Bush administration stand up to China? Let's hope for the best.
The people who won are now being rounded up by Mugabe. It's no wonder the opposition leadership is staying outside of the country. What is it going to take for Thabo Mbeki to realize that his 'quiet diplomacy' is a failure? Robert Mugabe never shies from using violence and detention yet Mbeki stays quiet. He should be ashamed of his actions and turning his back on the people of Zimbabwe who are suffering from the dictatorship. The people of South Africa including others in his own party as well as dock workers all see the obvious, but not Mbeki. His 'quiet diplomacy' defies all reality, much like his weird beliefs on AIDS.
The latest new on the Chinese weapons ship is that it's headed to Angola. The people of Angola are among the poorest people though the 'communist' leadership is among the richest in the world courtesy of oil money. Naturally the Bush administration promoted Angola to a high trading partner level a few years ago despite no sign of the government investing anything in its people. I traveled along the border of Angola a few years ago and was shocked at the extreme poverty of its people. The country is littered with land mines so they can't safely farm and the ocean fishing rights have been sold to the EU so they can't fish. Something tells me this is a government that won't say 'no' to supplies of military repression for a fellow dictator. Isn't it time the US speaks out on this with it's special trading partner or is oil too valuable? After all, they're just people in Zimbabwe and how will they help fuel our cars?
South African dock workers refused to unload the delivery for the desperate Robert Mugabe and the South African courts backed up the dock workers. The Chinese ship has since left Durban, South Africa and rumored to be heading for Mozambique. The shipment may unload in Mozambique (if dock workers again refuse) though it's a poor government so they may end up allowing passage. The problem there is that after decades of war, roads in Mozambique are difficult and drop off quickly outside of the city. Will the Chinese weapons make it in time to be distributed to Mugabe's thugs before his government folds or will the Chinese weapons be used to kill even more people?
Moving forward, this is great news both for Zimbabwe and South Africa. For whatever reason (historical perhaps) South African President Thabo Mbeki has never criticized Robert Mugabe and repeatedly has talked of 'silent diplomacy' in Zimbabwe as the way forward. The policy has failed and Mbeki has never been a neutral observer, but a Mugabe supporter.
Leading ANC figures have openly contradicted President Thabo Mbeki, who declared after meeting Mr Mugabe in Harare last weekend that there was "no crisis" in Zimbabwe. A top ANC official, Matthews Phosa – a close ally of the ANC leader Jacob Zuma – said yesterday that a crisis was "evident" in South Africa's northern neighbour. The party's national working committee, in a snub to the president, resolved to open direct contact with Zimbabwe's ruling Zanu-PF and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) to promote dialogue.
The deadlock in Zimbabwe has caused frustration in South Africa with Mr Mbeki's brand of "quiet diplomacy" to boil over.
Naturally, Mugabe's government has yet to release polling data. Vote rigging has increasingly been a complaint in recent Zimbabwe elections as the country has spiraled into runaway inflation and chaos. Will Mugabe step down if the results hold? That would be shocking.
The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) defied a government ban on pre-empting the official announcement of the election results and released the count from polling stations that showed Tsvangirai beating the man who has ruled Zimbabwe for 28 years, even in the president's home territory of Mashonaland.
'We've won this election,' said Tendai Biti, the MDC's secretary-general. 'The results coming in show that in our traditional strongholds we are massacring them. In Mugabe's traditional strongholds they are doing very badly. There is no way Mugabe can claim victory unless it is through fraud. He has lost this election.'
Black voters are heavily represented in the 94th Election District in Harlem’s 70th Assembly District. Yet according to the unofficial results from the New York Democratic primary last week, not a single vote in the district was cast for Senator Barack Obama.
That anomaly was not unique. In fact, a review by The New York Times of the unofficial results reported on primary night found about 80 election districts among the city’s 6,106 where Mr. Obama supposedly did not receive even one vote, including cases where he ran a respectable race in a nearby district.
City election officials this week said that their formal review of the results, which will not be completed for weeks, had confirmed some major discrepancies between the vote totals reported publicly — and unofficially — on primary night and the actual tally on hundreds of voting machines across the city.
In the Harlem district, for instance, where the primary night returns suggested a 141 to 0 sweep by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, the vote now stands at 261 to 136. In an even more heavily black district in Brooklyn — where the vote on primary night was recorded as 118 to 0 for Mrs. Clinton — she now barely leads, 118 to 116.
Favorite part of the article:
A number of political leaders also scoffed at the possibility that local politicians, even if they considered it vital that Mr. Obama or Mrs. Clinton prevail in the primary, were capable of even trying to hijack such a contest.
Still, for those inclined to consider conspiracy theories, the figures provided plenty of grist.
Ah yes, a little personal opinion from the objective reporter being injected into a news story. Because, you see, only a conspiracy nut would think that anyone would cheat at an election in America.
