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Post by Teesside White on Mar 30, 2008 12:27:32 GMT -1
lets hope that the rumours of a victory for the opposition are true and Mugabe is forced out
if he does lose then the new government must immediately place him under arrest, try him for crimes against humanity and sentence him to death
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Post by El Morto La Hoja! on Mar 30, 2008 12:39:12 GMT -1
.... does the opposition winning mean anything in a country without the rule of law...?
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Post by Teesside White on Mar 30, 2008 14:08:38 GMT -1
no idea....but its a step in the right direction if they get rid of Mugabe
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Post by El Morto La Hoja! on Mar 30, 2008 14:15:02 GMT -1
Zimbabwe govt warns opposition over victory claims
Reuters By MacDonald Dzirutwe
HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe's opposition said on Sunday it had won the most crucial election since independence but President Robert Mugabe's government warned its opponents that premature victory claims would amount to an attempted coup.
Tendai Biti, secretary general of the main MDC opposition party, told diplomats and observers overnight that early results posted at polling stations showed the MDC was victorious. "We have won this election, we have won this election," he said.
Officials said they would begin announcing results of the presidential, parliamentary and local polls on Sunday. Voting ended at 7 p.m. (6:00 p.m. BST) on Saturday.
Zimbabwe's security forces, which have thrown their backing firmly behind Mugabe, said before the election they would not allow a victory declaration before counting was complete.
"It is called a coup d'etat and we all know how coups are handled," government spokesman George Charamba told the state-owned Sunday Mail.
Residents in the eastern opposition stronghold of Manicaland said riot police stopped a victory demonstration by about 200 MDC supporters. There was no violence, they said.
Mugabe, in power since independence from Britain in 1980, faced his most formidable challenge in the election against MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai and ruling ZANU-PF party defector Simba Makoni campaigning on the collapse of Zimbabwe's economy.
Although the odds seem stacked against Mugabe, 84, analysts believe he will be declared the winner, and the opposition accused him of widespread vote-rigging.
FRAUD
African observers say they detected fraud in Saturday's ballot.
Mugabe, who accuses the West of sabotaging Zimbabwe's economy, expressed confidence on Saturday he would be returned to office. "We will succeed. We will conquer," he said.
He rejected vote-rigging allegations.
Once-prosperous Zimbabwe is suffering from the world's highest inflation rate of more than 100,000 percent, chronic shortages of food and fuel, and an HIV/AIDS epidemic that has contributed to a steep decline in life expectancy.
Biti said the MDC's election agents had reported that early results showed Tsvangirai was projected to win 66 percent of the vote in the capital Harare, an opposition stronghold.
He said Tsvangirai had made significant inroads in Mugabe's rural strongholds by leading in the southern province of Masvingo and Mashonaland Central Province, north of Harare, where the MDC has not won a parliamentary seat since 2000.
Observers from the Pan-African parliament said in a letter to the electoral commission they had found more than 8,000 non-existent voters registered on empty land in a Harare constituency.
Most international observers were banned and a team from the regional grouping, the Southern African Development Community (SADC), did not comment on Sunday. Critics say the SADC, which has tried to mediate over Zimbabwe, is too soft on Mugabe.
If no candidate wins more than 51 percent of the vote, the election will go into a second round.
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some of that sounds abit ominus....
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Post by CHOPPER READ on Mar 30, 2008 15:34:31 GMT -1
Mugabe will be living a life of luxury over here by tuesday knowing our stupid govt.
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Post by El Morto La Hoja! on Mar 30, 2008 15:36:34 GMT -1
and think he'd get sent to the hague if he set foot on british soil without diplomatic immunity...
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Post by Pete the Wolf on Mar 30, 2008 15:42:02 GMT -1
lets hope that the rumours of a victory for the opposition are true and Mugabe is forced out if he does lose then the new government must immediately place him under arrest, try him for crimes against humanity and sentence him to death Nah, prison for what's left of his life. See how he enjoys living the conditions that his countrymen have been suffering under his rule.
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Post by El Morto La Hoja! on Mar 30, 2008 15:43:04 GMT -1
... and make him shave that stupid tasch....
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Post by Mrs H on Apr 3, 2008 13:19:46 GMT -1
So it's Thursday and he still hasn't gone. You could have been a little more subtle with your vote rigging Robert!
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Post by PureOldGold on Apr 3, 2008 13:20:50 GMT -1
its gonna be a very long time until Mugabe goes.
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Post by Mrs H on Apr 3, 2008 13:35:34 GMT -1
Rumour is he's done a bunk!
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Post by URRZZZ!!! on Apr 3, 2008 16:06:26 GMT -1
I think a note of caution is needed. Obviously Mugabe's reign coming to an end is only a good thing, but I can't imagine something so big coming and going without some sort of violence. I'd also say cast your minds back 28 years when everyone thought Mugabe would be a good thing for Zimbabwe. Lets hope this new era is a good one and not a case of one evil leader taking over from anohter - which has happened far to often in the past.
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Post by Neko Bazu on Apr 3, 2008 16:20:15 GMT -1
I think Tsvgrthingy does honestly have good intentions, coming into power. However, whether or not the old adage about power corrupting comes to pass yet again remains to be seen.
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Post by PASTIE on Apr 3, 2008 18:25:26 GMT -1
Now they're encircling journalists and ransacking opposition HQ. The signs are not good. If Mugabe goes, for the sake of an attempt at a peaceful transfer I suspect that he will end up in Malaysia with all of his big business buddies and die an old and opulent man in palacial surroundings free from punishment like Idi Amin did in Saudi. I travelled in Zimbabwe in 1995 and loved it so much I considered staying and looking for work. Mugabe at the time was massively popular and he was taking all manner of socially conscious initiatives. Even as a visitor there, you were encouraged to be educated as on the entrance to every state run park or museum there was a notice declaring that whilst Western tourists were charged double the entrance fee of a Zimbabwean national we were earning on average fourteen times more and therefore were getting in proportionately far cheaper. I had no problem with that. There were housing schemes and education programmes plus all manner of environmental initiatives which looking back were way ahead of their time. It was a lush green idyllic countryside (in the South and East where we travelled) and the idea that somewhere so fertile could now be suffering famine is extraordinary. The brutality that replaced the tranquility and the poverty that emerged from the potential in Zimbabwe is a crime for which Mugabe should be accountable. I don't see that it will happen, however, and if it does I think an awful lot more people may be allowed to suffer before he permits any suffering or retribution to be allowed upon him. As for coming to Britain, I think we'd be last on the list. Besides, we seem to prefer ailing senile South American fascists as we had a better trading relationship with them
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Post by Pete the Wolf on Apr 3, 2008 20:13:06 GMT -1
I'd be interested to see Tsvangirai's popularity a year or two from now. He's going to be coming into power in a country suffering 100 000% inflation and 80% unemployment (if reports are to be believed). There's some major rebuilding required and I'd like to see how long he gets before the population get restless.
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Post by Neko Bazu on Apr 3, 2008 20:19:11 GMT -1
Let's face it, he's got the "at least it's not Mugabe" card to play for a good six months...
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Post by Pete the Wolf on Apr 3, 2008 20:31:19 GMT -1
True, but given that the 'land reform process' began in 2000, this country's been going downhill for 8 years and it's gonna take a lot longer than that for it to be back to the way it once was. Will the population be so keen to wait that long?
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Post by Neko Bazu on Apr 3, 2008 20:37:01 GMT -1
Given what I know of Zimbabwean people (I've met many at work), they'll be happy to just see it get a little better - at risk of sounding patronising, they really are happy to seize any improvement on their circumstances at the moment. Hence why one guy in our factory, who has a BSc in chemical analysis (or something similarly impressive and brainy, anyway) jumped at the opportunity to come over here and become a factory floor grunt, lugging bags of material round all day, and why so many my sister's met at college have no complaints about holding down two jobs around their college course just to pay the bills. Anything that improves their life will be gratefully received.
I know there'll be no miracle fix, but baby steps will be enough, as long as they can see progress being made.
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Post by Pete the Wolf on Apr 9, 2008 10:31:37 GMT -1
Can't find the story now, but BBC had something on Monday about poll officials being arrested for not announcing enough votes for Mugabe.
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Post by Neko Bazu on Apr 9, 2008 11:35:57 GMT -1
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