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Eddie Cross's Website

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Eddie Cross - Bulawayo, Zimbabwe

2008 Articles
25 Dec Kingdom Come
21 Dec Christmas
15 Dec Step Forward
5 Dec Beginning
1 Dec Amendment
30 Nov Facilitation
26 Nov Genocide
24 Nov Running Out
17 Nov Crisis
15 Nov Somalia
12 Nov What Next?
8 Nov Leadership
2 Nov Chipo
1 Nov Rome Burns
29 Oct Failure
25 Oct High Noon
19 Oct Never Easy
10 Oct Abyss
8 Oct Filibustering
4 Oct Chaos in Zim
29 Sept A Mule?
21 Sept On Step
16 Sept The End
12 Sept New Beginning
11 Sept Deal?
6 Sept Consequences
3 Sept Need a Deal
2 Sept Dollar Died
31 Aug Steering
29 Aug Unstuck
23 Aug Betrayed
18 Aug The Devil
13 Aug 13 Aug 08
12 Aug Today
11 Aug Cliffhanger
8 Aug Whats Going On
27 Jul Progress
22 Jul Agree to talk
21 Jul Mbeki kicks
16 Jul Crunch Time
13 Jul Economics
9 Jul Reality Looms
2 Jul Where?
30 Jun Looking Glass
26 Jun Battle
22 Jun What Now?
21 Jun The Commitment
16 Jun Do or Die
13 Jun Morning After
10 Jun Closing Doors
26 May Current Outlook
24 May Fan Club
19 May Tyranny
17 May End Game
15 May Flushing
8 May Violence
6 May Bizarre Process
25 Apr Cornered
20 Apr Electoral Fraud
19 Apr Jesse
17 Apr This Farce
11 Apr The Devil
6 Apr Wounded Buffalo
1 Apr Dying Kick
31 Mar Politcl Tsunami
27 Mar Current Situ.
26 Mar 4 days to go
21 Mar 8 days to go
15 Mar Election Time
27 Feb Games Begin
17 Feb Public Office
11 Feb Choices
4 Feb Decision Time
26 Jan Ambushed
25 Jan The Struggle
20 Jan Truth or Fiction
12 Jan Mugabe Mistake
8 Jan Surprise
2 Jan Kenya Lessons

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The Last Kicks of a Dying Horse

What a dramatic two days this has been. With voting over in the allotted 12 hours, counting has taken another 72 hours and in some cases the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission is still verifying the vote results. In a dramatic development the political masters in Zanu PF tried to force ZEC to declare Mugabe the winner with 53 per cent of the vote and a Zanu PF majority of 115 seats.

This information was sent to us by elements in Zanu PF and we made the plan public at a press conference at 10.00 hrs today. But once again the ZEC has come up trumps - they refused to gerrymander the results and are slowly releasing the final results to the public. This appears to be an effort to give the Zanu PF people a chance to 'clean house' in advance of what will be a fairly rapid transfer of power once the final figures for the Presidential election are announced.

It would seem that the last minute desperate measures to frustrate a MDC victory was made late yesterday and last night but has faded by this morning. The best indication of that is that the heavy police presence evident last night has faded and there are no police or army units on the street today.

So at last it looks as if the ZEC will eventually announce that Morgan Tsvangirai has won this election - I personally expect the final ZEC tally to be 58 per cent for Morgan Tsvangirai, 27 per cent for Mugabe and 15 per cent for Simba Makoni. I also expect that the final tally in terms of the Parliamentary seats will be 115 for MDC, 12 for the Mutambara group, 8 independents and 75 for Zanu PF. It is clear that many of the Zanu PF seats were in fact rigged in their favor but ZEC is accepting this as it was what I call 'micro rigging' - in the sense that they manipulated the numbers of people voting.

There were many ways in which they could do this - threats against the population - 'vote Zanu PF or else', multiple voting in remote areas where there was insufficient supervision, the postal ballot and moving people into key constituencies. We will have to look at all of these and decide which we will take to court once the dust has settled.

But there can be no doubt this was a huge upset. Zanu seems to have been dislodged by a variety of factors. They gerrymandered the electoral districts giving the rural vote (their traditional source of power) a 2 to 1 advantage over the urban voter. Then they gerrymandered the voter's roll and the distribution of polling stations. These measures were overcome by two essential elements - a very high turn out of the voters in urban areas (30 per cent of the voters roll but probably 65 per cent of the actual number of registered voters that are still here) and a very low turn out in rural districts (15 per cent or less). They also underestimated the Makoni factor and he did much better than expected.

This was a referendum on Mugabe's leadership and even with all the rigging and gerrymandering, he is now just so unpopular that he could not be rescued. I doubt if he got 10 per cent of the vote, nationwide. What we have witnessed in the last 24 hours are the last kicks of a dying dynasty. I wonder what is going on right now behind those closed doors!

Eddie Cross
31st March 2008