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Elections result point to run-off
At last after nearly five weeks and more than a month after polls closed in the Zimbabwe presidential election, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) announced the presidential results which point out to a run-off because nobody got more than 50% of the vote.
According to the released results Morgan Tsvangirai got 47.9 %, Robert Mugabe 43.2 % and Simba Makoni a distant third with 8.3 %.
So a run-off is required to decide the winner and I think that Morgan Tsvangirai stands a very good chance of winning if the elections can be held in a free and fair environment which looks unlikely after the recent reports of widespread violence and intimidation of opposition supporters.
I was surprised to see that Makoni actually got just over 8 % of the vote but that vote will now be crucial in the run-off and I am sure most of the people who voted Makoni are likely going to vote for Tsvangirai.
I also think that there is a going to be an even higher turn up in this election because with MDC having parliamentary majority people will know that their vote will count a lot this time.
I think the recent violence will not help Mugabe in any way and if anything it will make people more determined to vote against him. Its going to be interesting also to see what he will promise if he wins because the economy has become worse over the past month.
I read last week that the MDC were not keen on the run-off saying that Tsvangirai won outright but I think what they should do is contest the run-off and make sure there are many election observers for this election on the ground and that they should stay until the announcement of the result.
The ZEC also should promise people that it will not take another month to announce the results of the run-off. The wait for the results has been far too long and the run-off results should be announced as soon as possible after all this is just one election.
I will be keeping an eye on the events in Zimbabwe and I hope the conditions will improve greatly over the next few days to make sure that as many people as possible are able to freely cast their votes.
Its hard to see why there was such a delay but if I look again I think Zanu PF wanted to run its intimidation campaign before the run-off took place. Instead I think they ran the wrong campaign because what they should have done is use the opportunity to fix the economy.
It is the economy that makes Mugabe more and more unpopular each day and he has very little chance of getting many votes in the runoff intimidation or not because I think people have already made their minds and they know once they vote him out in this runoff he is gone.
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Thanks Jerome for the comment, I think you are right the delay will not help anything unless if the economy can be better but as you say as it is things are already getting worse and so that wont help much. Lets wait and see what happens next.
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True... also the economy has become so bad that even the oppressors are not immune to their own ruinous ways. I don't think they can actually sustain violence and intimidation - even that costs money, fuel and time and these are all run out now for ZANU. So let's see. Mr Tsvangirai has made what was realistically his only option,but fortunately standing up again against Mr Mugabe is a critically important move in terms of keeping whatever respect and support he has - and obviously he has way more than little support this time.
Will the 1 billion dollar note have his face on it? Time will tell!
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Yes Ron, the violence route is not sustainable and doesn't win extra votes for Zanu - infact they lose more votes that way because that will make people more determined to vote against them in the run-off.<br/>
They should have spent that effort on fixing the economy instead of just increasing salaries every month which just helps to make inflation worse when its already unmanageable.
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