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Africa Subsaharan
Mugabe poised to sign political death warrant
2008-09-15
However you look at it, Robert Mugabe is getting away with murder. The power-sharing deal he is expected to sign on Monday with his arch-rival, Morgan Tsvangirai, will protect Zimbabwe's president and his cohorts from prosecution for their bloody campaign of killings and terror against opposition supporters and their leaders.

Mugabe will remain president, even though his claim of winning 90% of the valid votes in June's election was met with universal scorn after Tsvangirai pulled out because he did not want people killed going to vote for him.

The last time Zimbabwe's voters had a chance to cast a ballot without a gun to their heads, in the first round of presidential elections in March, Tsvangirai won. And that was with millions of opposition voters in exile and a good deal of other kinds of intimidation by the ruling Zanu-PF party.

Mugabe will sit at the head of a Cabinet half filled with men responsible for robbing Tsvangirai of his electoral victory by murdering, beating and terrorising the supporters of the other half of the Cabinet. When they weren't doing that, they were looting the central bank, stealing land and driving the economy into the ground through incompetence and cynicism, leaving millions on the brink of starvation.
Now Mugabe will sit at the head of a Cabinet half filled with men responsible for robbing Tsvangirai of that victory by murdering, beating and terrorising the supporters -- and sometimes the families -- of the other half of the Cabinet. When they weren't doing that, they were looting the central bank, stealing land and driving the economy into the ground through incompetence and cynicism, leaving millions on the brink of starvation.

So an agreement that persuades the opposition to recognise Mugabe as president and keeps Zanu-PF's killers and looters out of jail might be viewed as a great victory for the old man. Yet the historic deal holds the elements to dismantle Mugabe's 28-year rule and reduce the power of the only leader Zimbabwe has known until a clean election can be held.

Behind the scenes, Movement for Democratic Change leaders are calling the agreement a watershed. Some quietly realise that Monday could mark the end of their struggle to finish Zanu-PF's abusive and sometimes violent political domination - the second liberation struggle, as one put it -- and the beginning of the equally demanding challenge to take control of government.

If they can pull it off -- and, in many ways, whether they succeed or fail lies within the MDC's control, not Zanu-PF's -- then Mugabe's pledge that Tsvangirai would never rule Zimbabwe, and his bloody strategy to try to ensure it did not happen, will ultimately have failed.

It is a complex arrangement, but the nuts and bolts of the agreement are that while Mugabe is president, Tsvangirai has day-to-day control of government as prime minister and head of a council of ministers. That is a considerable asset, even though many of his ministers will be from Zanu-PF. Tsvangirai will run the council of ministers without Mugabe present, but will sit in the Cabinet chaired by the president.

Crucially, the two MDC factions have a majority of one in both bodies, as well as control of Parliament, allowing the party to out-vote Mugabe and set policy. That will allow the MDC to dismantle the apparatus of repression which helped keep Mugabe in power long after his popularity crumbled. The government will be able to abolish legislation banning newspapers, locking up journalists and imposing severe restrictions on freedom of speech.
Posted by:Fred

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