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Zimbabwe Voting Results Will Force Leadership Runoff
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"I don't think that they are serious about not participating, because they have been saying different things since the election day," said Mugabe's security minister, Didymus Mutasa. "But if they are serious this time around, they will be shocked because we will proceed without them. Mugabe will be declared the winner unopposed."
The widespread political brutality, including last week's arrest of hundreds of activists who had moved into opposition party headquarters after fleeing their homes in the countryside, has added fuel to opposition arguments that participating in a second round of voting will only invite more violence, with no possibility that Mugabe, 84, will step down.
Party officials said Friday that they would proceed to form a government but offered no plan for how they would implement it.
Political analyst Eldred Masunungure said Tsvangirai has no choice but to begin campaigning for the runoff.
"He is given to prevaricating and flip-flopping, but I believe that he will eventually participate, no matter what he says," Masunungure said. If the election occurs, he added, "people will be beaten and killed. There will be chaos."
Violence perpetrated by ruling party forces, including the military, police and gangs of youths, has been focused in large rural towns that were once Mugabe strongholds. Tsvangirai won in many of these areas, by wide margins in many cases. Opposition activists have been beaten and tortured, and more than 800 homes have been burned down, according to Chamisa.
Yet many voters said the attempts to intimidate them have not changed the political dynamics in a country where inflation is 165,000 percent and formal employment rare.
"We already knew that Mugabe will cheat again," said Tabhani Mabhena, 45, a salesperson in Harare, the capital. "What is, however, a fact is that he won't continue to cheat forever. The reason why he did not win this election was because he did not rig enough. He is running out of means and tricks to rig the elections because the margins are huge. In the runoff, the margins will be bigger. He will be shocked."
