Zimbabwe: Slow vote

A runoff in the presidential election between incumbent Robert Mugabe and challenger Morgan Tsvangirai will not be held by the constitutionally mandated deadline on Friday.

Tsvangirai, whom official results released on May 2 put in first place in the March 29 poll with 47.9% of the vote, has confirmed that he will take part in the second round.  He has been outside Zimbabwe since the week after the elections, in which his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) also secured a majority in the lower house of parliament -- the first time since independence in 1980 that Mugabe’s ZANU-PF has lost power.  Tsvangirai had been calling for Zimbabwe’s neighbours to pressure Mugabe to step down, claiming that he had won outright in the first round with 50.3%.  Despite some more robust criticism -- in particular from the government in Zambia and unions and the ANC in South Africa -- no real change from the ‘quiet diplomacy’ has emerged.

The Southern African Development Community has voiced concerns about the conditions for a run-off, the deadline for which has been pushed back to the end of July.  The MDC has reported widespread violence against its supporters, claiming over 30 have been killed since the elections -- many in the past week.  The government denies claims of repression against opposition supporters, but a statement from a member of the ZANU-PF Politburo indicated they intended to give the people a chance to “vote properly” and return Mugabe to office.