Zimbabwe

Waiting in limboland

Zimbabwe waits to see whether president Robert Mugabe will go after the opposition wins the parliamentary election

WHATEVER the final outcome of Zimbabwe’s curious general elections at the weekend—and it remains possible, despite indications of a big win for the opposition, that President Robert Mugabe will refuse to relinquish power—it has produced some significant changes. Even before the voting took place on Saturday March 29th Mr Mugabe must have felt less comfortable in State House than at any time before in his 28 years in office. An old ally from the ruling ZANU-PF party, Simba Makoni, had defected to run as an opposition candidate. New election arrangements, established under pressure from neighbouring South Africa, had allowed the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), to campaign more freely in rural areas that were long dominated by Mr Mugabe’s party. In addition polling stations were told to post results in public once counting in each constituency was complete.

This last requirement explains why the MDC, led by Morgan Tsvangirai, and various independent groups have been able to produce their own overall results. These show (although with some variation according to who does the estimating) that ZANU-PF, and Mr Mugabe, have been roundly rejected by voters. In contrast, official results have been delayed for several days as Mr Mugabe and his allies scrabble around for options. The full official results of the parliamentary election were finally announced on Wednesday, showing an emphatic win for the opposition: the MDC received 96 seats to 94 for the ruling party. A breakaway faction of the opposition got another 9 seats. In a few cases suspicion over large victories for ruling-party candidates in remote and rural areas may lead, later, to legal challenges.

More gripping, however, is the presidential election, for which no official results have been announced several days after voting took place. One measure of the uncertainty in Zimbabwe is that even the state-owned daily newspaper, the Herald, which is usually slavishly pro-Mugabe, has so far chosen not to claim victory for the president. Instead, on Wednesday its front page declared that a run-off election between Mr Mugabe and Mr Tsvangirai may be on the cards.

If this is an indication of what Mr Mugabe intends to happen, then the official results for the presidential vote, when they come, will have to show that no candidate won over half of the total vote. But Mr Tsvangirai believes that he has slightly more than half the ballots cast. An alternative theory is that Mr Mugabe, through the Herald, is floating the idea of a run-off as a means to put pressure on the opposition as the rivals hammer out some sort of power-sharing deal behind the scenes. One possibility is that South Africa, which has pushed for several years to get a government of national unity in Zimbabwe, is trying to persuade moderate members of the ruling party to agree to work together with the opposition (and vice versa). If so, the army, the Central Intelligence Organisation and other parts of the security forces would also have to go along with it. Other leaders in southern Africa are said to be unwilling to let the wretched situation in Zimbabwe continue for another five years.

The willingness of ordinary Zimbabweans to protest is slight—so the risk of Kenya-style post-election street violence is low, even if Mr Mugabe simply refuses to go. After previous elections that the opposition claimed to have won in Zimbabwe both the opposition and ordinary people refused to risk bloodshed in an effort to bring about change. The streets of Harare, the capital, have been quieter than usual for several days, as residents keep their heads down and ears glued to radio sets. Many stocked up on food ahead of the poll. In the outskirts of Harare an MDC supporter says he does not expect any trouble if Mr Mugabe stays. People are afraid of being beaten up, he explains.

Yet it is not public protests that threaten the 84-year-old leader. His close allies in the ruling party and the security forces can see that Mr Mugabe, long a popular liberation hero, is a wasting asset: he is no longer able to deliver genuine electoral victories, and nor is he able to rig elections with ease. A tremendously wily politician, he may yet hope that if a run-off election is held against Mr Tsvangirai he will have a last chance to fix an election result, but this is a far cry from the dominant leader of old.