I’ll go if I lose, says Mugabe

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe addresses a press conference at State House in Harare, Tuesday, July, 30, 2013 Mugabe, who is contesting against his main rival, Priminster Morgan Tsvangirai in the presidential poll said he would accept results of the election set for Wednesday(AP Photo/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe addresses a press conference at State House in Harare, Tuesday, July, 30, 2013 Mugabe, who is contesting against his main rival, Priminster Morgan Tsvangirai in the presidential poll said he would accept results of the election set for Wednesday(AP Photo/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi

Published Jul 31, 2013

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 Harare - Oozing charm, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe promised on Tuesday to step down from power if he is beaten in Wednesday’s election.

But his main rival, Morgan Tsvangirai, and his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) were not fooled into thinking it would be easy to dislodge Mugabe and Zanu-PF’s 33-year iron grip on power.

They have a mountain to climb, including a voters roll they claim has been rigged, security forces and state media openly pro-Mugabe, and Zanu-PF’s populist promises to seize white businesses and share them with blacks – Mugabe’s “indigenisation” policy.

On Tuesday night, state broadcaster ZBC, which has given almost no time to Tsvangirai, featured a long, live press conference in which Mugabe was the epitome of charm and reconciliation.

Promising he would go willingly if outvoted on Wednesday, Mugabe said: “If you lose, you must surrender to those who won. We will comply with the rules.”

And, speaking to the media at his official residence in Harare, Mugabe addressed one of the main concerns of the opposition and outside observers when he denounced army chiefs who had repeated at the weekend that they would not accept any president without liberation credentials – in other words, Tsvangirai.

These often-repeated statements have been interpreted as threats that the generals would in effect mount a coup if Tsvangirai and the MDC were voted in.

“It was one or two who put their views and it was corrected,” said Mugabe.

He added that while there had been a few challenges, such as the delay in the delivery of ballot boxes, the campaign had been largely peaceful.

“I want to thank the other parties, big and small, the MDC and its leaders for what was a joint exercise, and appeal to our nation for a peaceful, fair, violence-free campaign. This is a moment for our people to cast their vote for the party of their liking,” Mugabe said.

Political analyst and academic Ibbo Mandaza dismissed Mugabe’s assurances with contempt.

“It was a public relations exercise on the eve of the election, which is going to be rigged. It was also a response to the tremendous last rally of the campaign held by Morgan Tsvangirai in Harare, which drew record crowds and shocked Zanu-PF. The handlers would have seen the rally and dreamt this up as a response.”

Tendai Biti, secretary-general of Tsvangirai’s MDC party and finance minister in the inclusive government, said: “It’s a lot of rubbish. A reptile by any other name is still a reptile.”

With just hours to go before polling was to begin at 9 735 polling stations, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) had still not issued hard copies of the vital voters roll to many opposition candidates – and had provided no electronic copies at all – in violation of the electoral law.

With 6.4 million voters in a population of 13.9 million, Zimbabwe’s voters roll may be inflated by as many as 2 million, including tens of thousands of dead people, according to analysts.

The MDC and its sympathisers claim that far more voters have been registered in Zanu -PF’s rural strongholds and too few in the MDC’s urban support base.

And because the voters roll has been issued so late, they say many of the 700 000 new voters will struggle to find out which wards or constituencies they must vote in.

On Tuesday, army trucks carrying armed soldiers were seen rolling into Harare’s poor townships, which are the heartland of the MDC, and into Midlands province, evidently as a precaution against election violence.

Though the country was calm and peaceful on the eve of the critical vote, analysts have cautioned that Zimbabwe was also calm before and during the last election in 2008. Violence broke out only after Tsvangirai emerged as the winner of the first round of voting.

 

About 20 000 official election observers, mainly from the Southern African Development Community, are monitoring the polls.

Independent Foreign Service

 

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