NOW that the Zimbabwean crisis has undeniably reached its tipping point with catastrophic failure looming on the horizon as everything for everyone everywhere across the country begins to rot or collapse beyond repair, it is alarming to observe that President Robert Mugabe remains doggedly in hot pursuit of a reckless three-pronged strategy to keep himself in power beyond 2008 without having to face the electorate ever again. The components of this creepy strategy are the reshuffled deadwood cabinet announced this week, the impossible social contract proposed last week by the governor of the Reserve Bank and the sinister proposal to harmonise presidential and parliamentary elections in 2010 under the laughable pretext of cutting administrative costs.Mugabe's latest futile attempt to impose a sinister extension of his now unwanted rule came last week on Wednesday at the first meeting in 2007 of the Zanu PF politburo. While the meeting reaffirmed the Goromonzi position that the 2010 proposal should be sent back to the ruling party's provincial structures where it faces certain death, the fact that Mugabe continues to single-mindedly push for the widely unpopular proposal poses a dangerous threat to national security, political stability and economic recovery efforts given that he is now a dangerous dying horse whose last kicks could be fatal to the nation if left unchecked.