News from the New Party

Zimbabwe votes

While the British government is trying to work out how to get more people to vote, the government of Zimbabwe has been trying to work out how to stop them, apparently without success:

At Waterfalls primary school in Parktown a queue stretched for about 400 yards by 6.30am, half an hour before polling stations opened. In Victoria Falls there was almost a stampede as people jostled to get into a polling station in Chinotimba township.

Fed up with the lack of food and inflation of 150,000%, people seemed undeterred by the presence, as in previous elections, of army trucks patrolling the streets with water cannons and jets circling the skies.

It appears that Zimbabweans are now serious about replacing Robert Mugabe, the dictatorial and disastrous president of what was once one of the richest countries in Africa.  But Mugabe is unlikely to give up without a fight.  Worries that this election would be marred by massive electoral fraud - which has become the norm for Zimbabwean elections lately - are obviously at the forefront of many minds.  Delays in the announcement of election results are assumed to be evidence that the results are still in the process of being manufactured, rather than counted. 

In a bid not to be outflanked, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change has organised its own "parallel count", which unsurprisingly show that the MDC is winning.  We wish them well, as the official results are awaited: in a country where not only standing for office but even the act of voting itself requires considerable courage, their determination to overturn the Mugabe tyranny deserves success.