Will Mugabe steal the election? - Zimbabwe suspended between hope & disbelief

According a sage observation attributed to one-time Soviet ruler Leonid Brezhnev, "The trouble with free elections is, you never know who is going to win." As we are now seeing in Zimbabwe, this can sometimes happen even with highly unfree elections.

=> What happened in Saturday's elections? Unofficial estimates based on adding up posted vote-counts from election districts around Zimbabwe indicate that the opposition Movement for Democratic Change scored a decisive victory--not just in the presidential contest, but also in the parliamentary and local-government elections. These claims have been made not only by the MDC, which can hardly be regarded as an objective source, but also by non-partisan election monitors and even (privately and sometimes publicly) by election monitors from neighboring southern African countries, who have always been patsies for Mugabe and his henchmen in the past. This Los Angeles Times report is consistent with the others I've seen:

Mugabe, 84, faced the strongest challenge in his 28 years of power from Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change; and a ruling party defector, Simba Makoni. Unconfirmed reports said a swath of key ministers and Mugabe loyalists had lost their seats in parliament.

"The wave of change was too strong," said one shocked politician who lost office, a member of the ruling ZANU-PF party who spoke on condition of anonymity. He said conditions in the ruling party were extremely tense.

Tsvangirai's party maintained that he won 67% of the vote in 150 of the 210 constituencies. The figures were based on final tallies posted at individual polling stations after being signed off by electoral officials, the first time these counts have been posted.

The posting of final tallies at polling stations makes fraud easier to detect and follows recent reforms to election law after pressure from a regional body, the Southern African Development Community.

The opposition MDC's secretary-general, Tendai Biti, said the final support figure for Tsvangirai was expected to decline to about 55% as figures from Mugabe's rural strongholds in Mashonaland province came in.

In a briefing to diplomats, independent election observers put the result at 55% for Tsvangirai, 36% for Mugabe and 9% for Makoni, with 66% of votes counted. [....]

Even in some ruling party heartland areas like Manicaland province, Tsvangirai was well ahead, according to the final posted tallies.

In one Manicaland district, Nyanga, Tsvangirai won about 65% of the vote in the final tally posted at the polling booth, with 330 votes, while Mugabe got 177 and Makoni 53. In the contest for another rural Manicaland seat close to the Mozambique border, Tsvangirai won 70%.

"We've won this election," said an exhausted Biti. "The results coming in show that in our traditional strongholds, we are massacring them. In Mugabe's traditional strongholds they are doing very badly. There is no way Mugabe can claim victory unless it is through fraud. He has lost this election.

"We must savor these scenes, as for the rest of our lives we'll say we were there." [....]

David Coltart, from a small MDC faction split from the Tsvangirai group, said there were many reports of top Mugabe allies losing their seats.

"If that is true, this is literally a tsunami," he said.

=> On the other hand, the official results have not yet been announced by the Zimbabwe Election Commission. This is odd, since in previous Zimbabwean elections the results have been announced fairly quickly, sometimes within hours after the polls closed. This time, by contrast, official results for the parliamentary elections are just starting to dribble out several days later, and official results for the presidential contest have not been released at all.

The obvious inference is that the government apparatus is cooking the results, but they are still uncertain about much vote-rigging they should try to get away with. Probably they're shell-shocked too, and they're still deciding what to do next. Meanwhile, by all accounts, everything in Zimbabwe is caught in a state of suspended animation:

President Robert Mugabe and his ruling party were defeated in presidential and parliamentary elections, according to the opposition and independent observers, but there was deafening silence Sunday from the Zimbabwe Election Commission, which released almost no results.

Tension was high here in the capital, as large numbers of riot police patrolled deserted streets after dark. There were also reports of riot police in the crowded urban townships.

Fear grew that the count was being rigged as the delay in announcing results wore on. The first official results are usually released within hours of the polls closing.

The Guardian's Chris Beale elaborates (in a report from Harare worth reading in full):

Will Mugabe accept the result? Zimbabweans didn't so much speak in Saturday's presidential election as shout so overwhelmingly that Robert Mugabe and the Zanu-PF party elite who came to believe in their unchallenged right to rule have been stunned into silence. [....]

The final results may still require a run-off election if the opposition presidential candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, fails to pass the 50% threshold.

But there is little doubt that in the face of systematic intimidation of voters, the padding of the voters' roll and ballot box stuffing, a vicious propaganda campaign in the state-run media and millions of potential opposition voters having left the country in search of work, the verdict on what looks to be the final years of Mugabe's rule was damning.

Millions of Zimbabweans cast their votes with hope born of desperation. Mugabe offered no future beyond the rhetoric of endless conflict and the illusion that Zimbabweans were freer and "empowered" by land distribution as they sank deeper into poverty. [....]

Their challenge now is to get Mugabe - and his security chiefs in the army and police who have said they will never recognise a victory by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change - to accept the result. The MDC is trying to create a momentum to make it difficult for the government to reverse the results. By collating and releasing the official results from polling stations ahead of the state-run electoral commission, the opposition undercuts attempts to change the numbers in the final tallying.

It also has the backing of independent witnesses to the count, including groups such as the US-funded Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN), which had observers at every polling station as the ballots were tallied. It supports the MDC assertion that Tsvangirai has an unassailable lead over Mugabe. Foreign observers, including those from South Africa who legitimised previous manipulated elections in Zimbabwe, privately say there is little doubt Tsvangirai has won.

If African poll monitors, whom the Zimbabwe government allowed in while excluding western observers, endorse Tsvangirai's victory then phone calls to Mugabe will come from Thabo Mbeki and other regional leaders appealing for him to go for the good of his country and theirs.

The MDC has also looked to the popular protests after Kenya's president tried to fix his re-election in December as an example. It will be harder to mobilise far more passive Zimbabweans but their anger might overcome fears and aversion to violence. [....]

=> However, it is by no means certain that Mugabe and the rest of the ZANU-PF ruling elite will agree to give up power, whatever the outcome of the election. In my highly non-expert opinion, all the experience of the past decades suggests that Mugabe himself will cling to power at any cost, even if he takes the country down with him. But, with luck, key segments of the elite will decide to jettison Mugabe and work out some sort of negotiated transition with the opposition--which could take various forms. Or, on the other hand, they may simply decide to abandon the last formalities of constitutional government and escalate to unvarnished military dictatorship. At this point, either outcome seems possible.

If the scale of the defeat is as large as it appears - with Tsvangirai on course to take almost twice as many votes as Mugabe - the upper echelons of Zanu-PF have much to be concerned about. With no stake in government, its leaders will have no protection from inquiries into corruption, state-sponsored violence against opponents, the plunder of white-owned farms and a host of other abuses of power. [....]

That will be an incentive to keep the MDC out of power - or to strike a deal.

The army might play a role in this. It could step in claiming to want to restore stability and force a coalition government. It sees itself as professional and it is questionable whether the military would want to hold on to power but it could force a power sharing deal that offers Zanu-PF politicians protection from accountability for past crimes. Mugabe has said the MDC will "never, ever" govern Zimbabwe, and that presumably means he has no intention of sharing power. That may no longer be the dominant view in his party. [....]

The people's verdict might lead Zanu-PF to conclude that if the party is to have a future it is without Robert Mugabe.

That's the optimistic scenario. Simon Tisdall, also writing in the Guardian, spells out a more catastrophic alternative that is, alas, not at all implausible:

The 84-year-old president's hold on power, once both legitimate and unchallengeable, has been severely weakened by his own failures, isolation and paranoia, and now by an apparently stunning electoral reverse. All the stuffed ballot boxes in the world may not drown out Saturday's cry of rage.

Yesterday's official silence concerning the presidential election results suggests even the most expert vote-riggers, their dubious skills honed in earlier stolen contests, are at a stand over how to make defeat add up to victory. That will not stop them trying. The whole crooked regime has too much to lose, and to fear from possible reprisals, to give up without one last fiddle. [....]

Mugabe's third choice is to insist, against all the evidence and the convictions of international observers, that he has won his re-election battle, or at the very least forced a second round run-off against his main opponent, the MDC's Morgan Tsvangirai. If he takes this path - and the longer the results are delayed, the more likely it appears that he will - then Zimbabweans will face a choice in their turn.

Under the intimidating eye of the security forces, voters can bow to the oft-brandished threat of violent retribution and passively accept what amounts to daylight robbery, as they have been obliged to do in the past. Or, less probably, they can take the Kenyan route, counting on sustained popular resistance to force the president to back down. [....]

Mugabe's final choice, and possibly the most destructive, may be termed the Musharraf gambit, after Pakistan's current president: when facing electoral difficulties, and if all else fails, declare a state of emergency, impose martial law, suspend parliament and the courts, and rule by presidential decree with the support of the armed forces. [JW: Actually, the Musharraf analogy is a little strained, since this strategy would almost certainly be more brutal, more long-term, and more disastrous for the country than Musharraf's brief spell of martial law in Pakistan. It would make more sense to call this Mugabe's Burmese option.] Locking up your opponents, or failing to protect them from assassins, are optional extras.

Mugabe would probably be loth to shed the trappings of democracy, which have long served as window dressing for his growing absolutism. But with senior ministers within Zanu-PF losing their seats, and with the party's loyalty increasingly strained, the pretence of pluralism or even oligarchy may no longer be affordable. Out-and-out dictatorship would be the logical result.

It is still Mugabe's choice to make. But Zimbabwe's political fundamentals changed irrevocably at the weekend. His options are narrowing fast and may soon evaporate altogether. Only one thing seems certain: when the end finally comes, he will be the very last to accept it.

Meanwhile, let me draw your attention to another valuable roundup from Norman Geras, "Hope and Madness in Zimbabwe" (below).

Hoping for the best,
Jeff Weintraub
==============================
Norman Geras (normblog)
March 31, 2008
Hope and Madness in Zimbabwe

> 'It started as a whisper, and then became a shout.' Catherine Philp reports from Bulawayo.

> Chris McGreal: 'The victory of the opposition candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, appears to be so clear that the numbers cannot so easily be fixed.'

> Zimbabwean Basildon Peta: 'I am convinced the end has finally come for the Zimbabwean President after 28 years of misrule'; but 'It is unlikely to be a smooth transition'.

> The tenor of these reports matches an email I've had today from a contact inside Zimbabwe: 'Available data show Tsvangirai with a more than 50% victory in the first round. I was an official observer in Gutu south in Masvingo, and Tsvangirai took over 60% of the vote there (traditionally a ZANU stronghold). ZEC is delaying announcing results but I think there is too much documentary evidence already out for ZANU to rig/steal it again - and the margins of MDC victory are too big.'

> '"The wave of change was too strong," said one shocked ruling ZANU-PF politician who lost office, speaking on condition of anonymity. He said conditions in the ruling party were extremely tense.' I'll bet they are.

> Finally, how power can drive a person crazy: 'Within me, there is a charitable disposition towards others'; 'I don't make enemies, no... I make no enemies'; 'a forgiving person'; 'we've got to translate our political freedom into economic freedom'; 'no regrets'. Who can this be?

South African columnist Justice Malala: "Our Silence is Deafening"

In this angry and eloquent indictment, South African writer Justice Malala powerfully sums up the Zimbabwean catastrophe and asks: "What will we say when our children ask what we did to end Robert Mugabe’s dictatorship?"

South Africa is far from the only country for which the answers--ranging from inaction to criminal complicity--will be shameful and embarrassing, and this is the sort of question that children in a number of other countries should also ask ... but probably won't.

--Jeff Weintraub
=========================
The Times (Johannesburg)
Monday, March 31, 2008
Justice Malala: Monday Morning Matters
Our silence is deafening

What will we say when our children ask what we did to end Robert Mugabe’s dictatorship?

When our children learn the history of post-colonial Africa, they will be confronted with a case history: Zimbabwe.

They will learn how the bread basket of Africa descended into chaos, with the highest inflation rate in the world.

They will learn that about four million Zimbabweans fled hunger and political persecution.

They will learn about a kleptocracy that lined its pockets while the poor died.

This will not be a history lesson. It will be a dissection of a massacre.

By the elections of March 29 2008, our children will read, the average life expectancy of a Zimbabwean woman was 34 years and that of a man 37.

Television footage of that day will show women with babies on their backs crawling under barbed-wire fencing into South Africa in the hope of finding food, safety and a life for their children.

Election day 2008 will be a slice of tragic history.

Our children will learn that, in a country with one of the highest literacy rates in the developing world and blessed with a vibrant press for more than two decades, only two daily newspapers inside Zimbabwe reported on these elections.

Both were owned by the state and neither published a single positive story about the opposition in the run-up to elections.

On that day, election observers from Europe and the US were banned from the country. Only SADC observers were allowed in.

Our children will learn that during the previous election the South African observers were beaten up by police. And that those bandaged heroes declared as free and fair an election universally condemned as rigged.

Election day 2008 will be remembered for the fact that broadcasters such as Sky News filed their stories from Beit Bridge in South Africa because they were banned from entering Zimbabwe. Independent stations such as South Africa’s e.tv were also banned.

Our children will learn that police inside the polling booths “assisted” Zimbabweans to vote. They will read that these same police had, for 10 years, put a stop to any kind of democratic activity by the opposition or civil society.

They will learn that, only a year before these elections, the same police officers destroyed the homes of thousands in President Robert Mugabe’s inhumane “Operation Murambatsvina”.

Our children will learn that these same police beat opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai to within an inch of his life only a year earlier, forcing him to seek medical treatment in South Africa.

At this point our children will ask the teacher (perhaps a Zimbabwean who is a naturalised South African): “But what did our parents do? What did South Africa say when all this was happening?”

And our children will learn that for nine years the president of South Africa pursued a senseless, immoral policy of “quiet diplomacy”.

In essence, the policy meant that South Africa chose to be friends with Mugabe, aiding and abetting the dictator while desperate Zimbabweans fled torture and imprisonment.

They will learn that Nelson Mandela, the iconic first president of the new and democratic South Africa, spoke out about leaders who clung to power at the expense of their people and was told to shut up; that Archbishop emeritus Desmond Tutu spoke up and was vilified by the dictator Mugabe, the South African presidency and its acolytes.

And they will learn that most South Africans expressed neither outrage nor shame at what was happening just across their border; that they went about their business without a care.

Our children will learn that a good man, Father Paul Verryn, gave refuge to hundreds of Zimbabweans in his church in central Johannesburg. And they will learn that police raided the church and arrested refugee children as young as five months old.

By the time our children ask what South Africans did about this outrage, Zimbabwe will be just another African country paying off massive debt to the World Bank when it could have been a beacon of peace, prosperity and hope.

The silence of your parents, the history books will say, was deafening.

Exhilaration, uncertainty, hope, & anxiety: Zimbabwe after the election

In the aftermath of Zimbabwe's stunning election upset on Saturday (see HERE & HERE & HERE), the Guardian's Chris McGreal tries to capture the conflicted mood of Zimbabweans.

There is a collective holding of the breath in Zimbabwe as people who can't quite believe they have managed so decisively to defeat Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party wait to see what happens next. [....]

Witness Mbira, who described himself as an "interested poll-watcher with no money, thanks to Mugabe" said: "Zanu-PF had no idea what the people thought. If they did, how could they imagine that we would vote for them after what they have done to us? They thought they could buy us with free spades and threaten us that we will not eat. We have been delivered from darkness, from hell. They are finished. The people have spoken and now they know we do not want them. The message here is that they are thieves and murderers and liars. Now they can go away." [....]

There were celebrations in some places: Harare's Chitungwiza township and in Bulawayo saw cheering crowds of young people. But most people are wary, uncertain what the police and army will do after the security chiefs said they would never recognise a Tsvangirai victory.

Their wariness may well be justified. We should know soon. Meanwhile, read the whole piece (below).

--Jeff Weintraub
==============================
The Guardian
Monday March 31 2008
Holding their breath, for the beginning of the end
By Chris McGreal

Zimbabweans dare not celebrate yet. But they ask excitedly if it can be true that the "old man" might really be on his way out, and then they reflect with resignation that Zimbabwe has been this way before. Robert Mugabe probably lost the 2002 election before the state-run electoral commission changed the numbers.

"We want to believe but can't quite," said George Murangari, a Harare churchgoer. "We know he's lost but we can't say he's lost until he admits it. Do you think he's just going to give up? If you do, you don't know Mugabe."

But this time it might be different. The victory of the opposition candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, appears to be so clear that the numbers cannot so easily be fixed. There is a collective holding of the breath in Zimbabwe as people who can't quite believe they have managed so decisively to defeat Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party wait to see what happens next.

Even the belligerently pro-Mugabe Sunday Mail newspaper abandoned its ritual front page denunciation of the president's opponents in favour of a unusually realistic headline: "Anxiety grips Zim". The editors had, no doubt, been preparing to declare a great victory for Mugabe but as the election results filtered across the country, people from all sides took a step back to consider what it all meant.

Witness Mbira, who described himself as an "interested poll-watcher with no money, thanks to Mugabe" said: "Zanu-PF had no idea what the people thought. If they did, how could they imagine that we would vote for them after what they have done to us? They thought they could buy us with free spades and threaten us that we will not eat.

"We have been delivered from darkness, from hell. They are finished. The people have spoken and now they know we do not want them. The message here is that they are thieves and murderers and liars. Now they can go away."

For all Mbira's anger, there is no mood of vengeance or retribution. More than anything, there will be relief that finally the beginning of the end of the misery may be in sight. It will take years to revive Zimbabwe's economy but parts of it can be put back on track relatively quickly, particularly agriculture. Many Zimbabweans are counting on Britain and other western countries to pour in aid if Mugabe goes, and foreign businesses to return. That offers the hope of jobs and that the millions of exiles - doctors, teachers, the skilled and unskilled - will come home and families will be reunited, maybe not now but "sometime" people say.

There were celebrations in some places: Harare's Chitungwiza township and in Bulawayo saw cheering crowds of young people. But most people are wary, uncertain what the police and army will do after the security chiefs said they would never recognise a Tsvangirai victory.

"It is like a second liberation and like the first liberation we might have to fight some more before our victory is complete," said Mbira. But maybe not. Ordinary soldiers and policemen have suffered just as much as anyone, and so have their families.

Hardly anyone is thinking about what a Tsvangirai presidency may actually mean. Give it a few years and Zimbabweans might be raising statues to Mugabe and fondly remembering the fiery revolutionary who helped deliver them freedom before he led them to disaster.

The first Iranian-born mayor of an American city ...

... is Jewish. (And a Democrat.) Strictly speaking, I should put that in the past tense, since the man in question, Jimmy (Jamshid) Delshad, was elected Mayor of Beverly Hills in March 2007 and just completed his one-year term. Delshad immigrated to the US in his teens, became a computer engineer and then an entrepreneur, made a bundle, moved to Beverly Hills (part of greater "Tehrangeles"), went into politics, and now this--in short, a canonical American immigrant success story.

By all accounts, Delshad seems to have done a good job as Mayor. I just noticed a video about him, which you can watch HERE.

=> Overall, this is a charmingly positive only-in-America sort of story. As last year's Washington Post article about Delshad's election reported:

Jimmy Delshad promised in Farsi-accented English to faithfully serve as mayor, and a crowd of nearly 1,000 stood to cheer. And so Beverly Hills got its first Iranian American chief executive, marking the political arrival of an immigrant community that has quietly reshaped this famously posh city over the past 25 years. [....]

In his inaugural speech, Delshad spent more time on the intractable traffic problems in Beverly Hills than on his ethnicity. [....] But Delshad knows he is a cultural ambassador as much as a city administrator. "I wanted to open doors for others who would see me as an example," he said in his speech.

And Delshad, who is Jewish, chose a Holocaust survivor to swear him in. Going off script, Delshad said from the lectern, "Don't let anybody doubt the Holocaust, because if you do, I'll buy you a one-way ticket to Auschwitz."

"That was directed to [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad," he said the next day. "They put in the paper in Iran: 'Persian Jew Will Be Mayor of Beverly Hills.'" [....]

In the US, many city governments seem to have their own foreign-policy agendas (not unlike the current Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone). Yes, I know this sort of thing drives so-called international-relations "realists" crazy, but realists (without quotation marks) have to recognize that it has long been a part of US politics.

Delshad, a slight man with graying hair and a wide smile, sees himself as uniquely suited to bridge his native and adopted cultures. He immigrated with his brother 49 years ago, and when later waves of immigrants arrived, their cultural differences "hit me in the face," he said. As he earned a bachelor's degree and became a successful computer engineer, Delshad used his fluency in both cultures to mediate between them.

Among his fans is Mimi Rastgar, who stood in the back and wiped away a tear as Delshad took his oath of office this week.

"I am so happy that he is the mayor," she said afterward, "especially now that the Iran government is not positive about Jews. We are second-class people in Iran."

"This," Rastgar said, cocking her head toward Delshad, "is proof that if we have a chance, we can do anything."

=> At the same time, as is usually the case in the real world, the socio-political background to this story is not without some tensions and difficulties. The Washington Post article noted some of those, too:

Now, about 8,000 of the city's 35,000 residents are Iranian. They have made their mark -- and sometimes ruffled feathers -- in this sunny oasis of palm-lined streets.

Here the public schools give students the day off for Norouz, the Iranian New Year holiday in March. This month, for the first time, ballots were printed in Farsi as well as Spanish and English.

Some Iranians' preference for large houses with columns and gates has transformed streets of single-story bungalows with lush lawns in front, prompting an outcry from older residents, who scorn the new two-story flat-fronted houses with paved yards as "Persian palaces."

"We have lots of family gatherings, lots of parties," said Parvin Shahlapour, an Iranian immigrant and sociology researcher at the University of California at Los Angeles. Groups of 50 or more may congregate weekly in one home, so "we like big guest rooms, large dining rooms," she said.

The festive ways of Persian culture have also drawn noise complaints from neighbors. "Beverly Hills is used to going to sleep at 9 o'clock," Delshad said. "This is the time we get started."

Why does this all sound so familiar? One of the recurring themes of American social history is that successive waves of immigrants are always being criticized for being too loud, vulgar, and pushy--and, if they succeed, for being too ostentatiously arriviste, too. All through the 20th century, for example, those were standard stereotypes applied to my own ethnic group, Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe. And I gather from things I've read that at least some descendants of those eastern European Jewish immigrants who live in Beverly Hills now feel the same way about those loud, flashy, vulgarly ostentatious Iranian Jews. So it goes ...

One of Delshad's tasks as mayor will be to respond to Iranians who want to bring late-night restaurants and clubs to the city, something other residents may resist, he said.

But if they are remaking Beverly Hills, their political engagement -- and acceptance -- has been slow. In Delshad's first campaign four years ago, he received death threats and felt he needed bodyguards. But reaction to his reelection this month was more subdued, though hundreds of people did call the city clerk to protest the printing of ballots in Farsi.

Incidentally, before you jump to overly easy conclusions, a number of those complaints about Farsi/English ballots came from Iranian-Americans:

Delshad said he opposed the bilingual ballots and tried to make clear he had nothing to do with them.
"The Iranian community is one of the most educated minorities in America and reads English well," he said. "The ballots only caused confusion, and were an insult to many Iranians."

At all events,

Delshad won a narrow victory.

Nooshin Meshkaty, who worked on that campaign and is now a member of the Beverly Hills school board, said persuading Iranians to vote was difficult.

"They have to accept that it's not stepping on anyone's toes to participate," she said. Also, Delshad said, many feared putting their names on any kind of official list, since in Iran such lists often meant "someone would come after you." [....]

On the other hand, in another touch that's not unusual in American ethnic/immigrant politics, Delshad appears to have gotten support from Muslim as well as Jewish Iranian-Americans. This is just one of several reports I've seen that agree on this point:

Iranian Americans of other religions have expressed their admiration for Delshad because he is also the first American of Iranian background to be elected to public office in the U.S.

"Mr. Delshad's work while mayor was very positive for all Iranians in the city and he proved that an Iranian is quite capable and can be successful while serving in public office," said Assadollah Morovati, the Iranian Muslim owner of "Radio Sedaye Iran" (KRSI), a Persian language satellite radio station based in Beverly Hills. "For every Iranian, he brought us an incredible sense of pride."

Maybe that sounds too nice to be true, but it actually makes quite plausible sociological sense. Here in the US, it seems, they're all Iranians together.

Yours for American ethnic pluralism,
Jeff Weintraub

Election results in Zimbabwe - Democratic miracle or prelude to further catastrophe ... or both?

Four days ago the journalist Dayo Olopade offered a prospective assessment of the upcoming Zimbabwean elections so penetratingly on-target that I have already quoted it a few times, and will do so again:

There is no room for middling outcomes—Saturday’s elections in Zimbabwe will either be historic or painfully routine.

Well, now we know at least that the results were not business as usual. They were stunningly unexpected, and may indeed prove to be historic. Against all the odds, and in the face of massive ongoing repression, violence, intimidation, and other forms of election-rigging, Zimbabwe's voters appear to have handed Mugabe and his ZANU-PF party a decisive electoral defeat. This represents a truly impressive achievement both for Zimbabwe's democratic opposition and for Zimbabwe's people as a whole.

On the other hand, this is not the end of the story. In 1990, when the Burmese military dictatorship was forced by popular and international pressures to hold elections, those elections were won decisively by opponents of the dictatorship led by Aung San Suu Kyi. The military responded by annulling the election results, putting Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest (where she has mostly remained since then), and intensifying their repression. As Norman Geras pointed out yesterday in his very useful post on the Zimbabwean elections, Mugabe and his henchmen have repeatedly warned that they would never willingly give up power to the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. So this election may prove to be the first step toward ending Mugabe's murderous and catastrophic despotism ... or the ruling elite may simply cast off its last pretensions to constitutional government and impose a more straightforward military dictatorship.

Norm concluded his discussion yesterday on an appropriate note of anxious uncertainty:

I hesitate to predict what is going to happen. Could this election herald the beginning of the end of Zimbabwe’s agony? I would like to be able to hope so. But I fear that it won’t — indeed that the country may be on the brink of worse yet, post-election violence either if Mugabe loses or if there is a widespread sense that he has won fraudulently.

Now we'll see what happens next. But, for the moment, I have to repeat that even having gotten this far constitutes an impressive, almost awe-inspiring achievement for Zimbabwe's democratic opposition ... and we have to hope that it constitutes a first step toward ending the agony of Zimbabwe's people.

Yours for democracy,
Jeff Weintraub
==============================
The Guardian
Sunday March 30 2008
Mugabe clings on in face of opposition victory
Chris McGreal in Harare

Robert Mugabe was desperately attempting to cling to power tonight despite his clear defeat in Zimbabwe's presidential election by blocking the electoral commission from releasing official results and threatening to treat an opposition claim of victory as a coup.

The Movement for Democratic Change said that what it regards as the overwhelming win by its candidate for president, Morgan Tsvangirai, is "under threat" despite growing support from foreign monitors for its claim of victory.

The party also said it had "security concerns" after a police raid on its election offices today, and Tsvangirai made no public appearances apparently out of concern for his safety.

Mugabe's spokesman, George Charamba, warned Tsvangirai not to declare himself president because that "is called a coup d'etat and we all know how coups are handled".

But sources close to the MDC said that the party leadership has put out feelers to the military and elements of the ruling Zanu-PF to try and arrange a peaceful transfer of power.

Independent monitoring groups said that returns posted at about two-thirds of polling stations gave Tsvangirai 55% of the vote to Mugabe's 36%. The monitors said there is no way now for the president, who even lost in his home territory of Mashonaland as well as other former strongholds, to legitimately win the election.

A third presidential candidate, Simba Makoni, a former finance minister who broke with Mugabe, took about 9%.

Zanu-PF also suffered losses in the parliamentary election with at least nine members of its politburo losing their seats including the vice president, Joice Mujuru, and the defence, information and education ministers.

The MDC's secretary general, Tendai Biti, said the party was increasingly alarmed at the refusal of the state-run Zimbabwe Electoral Commission to issue any results.

"We are very much concerned by the lack of results from the ZEC. It appears the regime is at a loss how to respond and is therefore taking its time. We are really concerned by this assault on democracy. The primary point of an election is a result. We think there is a constitutional threat to those results," he said.

The commission has in the past begun issuing results as soon as they are posted at polling stations, and collated them by constituency for release within hours of the vote.

ZEC's chairman, George Chiweshe, declined to explain why he was still not issuing results more than 24 hours after the polls closed. "This is a complicated election and we will release the results when we have them," he said.

Opposition supporters in some towns, including Bulawayo, Mutare and Masvingo, publicly celebrated but generally Zimbabweans were cautious, not quite believing that Mugabe will leave office after 28 years in power.

With more than 50% of the vote, Tsvangirai would avoid a run-off election although his proportion might yet fall below the threshold as many of the remaining results are from rural areas where Mugabe traditionally has support.

Biti warned that there was still scope for fraud. He said his party is still encountering irregularities including the sudden appearance of additional ballot boxes at polling stations where the count has been completed. He also said that MDC election agents had been prevented from attending the count at several polling stations where the results then showed Zanu-PF doing significantly better than in surrounding areas.

But there was a growing acceptance among foreign monitors and diplomats that Tsvangirai had secured a clear victory over Mugabe.

South African monitors said they believed the opposition had won but would hold off on a public statement until the official results were announced. The Pan-African parliament observer mission warned against further delays in issuing the results.

A British foreign office minister, Mark Malloch-Brown, said it was "quite likely" that Mugabe had lost despite "massive pre-election day cheating".

Biti declined to say how the MDC will confront Mugabe if he refuses to give up power. But he repeated hints that while the MDC would stay within the law it would encourage its supporters to challenge the government on the streets.

"I'm not going to prescribe a formula for Zimbabweans. I'm going to speak for the party I lead. We're going to do everything legally and constitutionally," said Biti.

Norman Geras on the Zimbabwean elections

Yesterday I posted a roundup of items on the Zimbabwean elections (Elections today in Zimbabwe), beginning with an assessment by Dayo Olopade that cut to the heart of the matter:

There is no room for middling outcomes—Saturday’s elections in Zimbabwe will either be historic or painfully routine.

But now I see that could simply have re-posted a cogent and penetrating discussion by Norman Geras (below). Norm knows and cares a lot about Zimbabwe; he was born there (before it became Zimbabwe) and has maintained an active and informed interest in the country. His post yesterday asked "Will Zimbabwe's Elections Be Free?" and listed 10 good reasons to expect otherwise, concluding:

I hesitate to predict what is going to happen. Could this election herald the beginning of the end of Zimbabwe’s agony? I would like to be able to hope so. But I fear that it won’t — indeed that the country may be on the brink of worse yet, post-election violence either if Mugabe loses or if there is a widespread sense that he has won fraudulently. Whatever happens, the words of Petina Gappah, a Zimbabwean writer and lawyer, are apposite in the circumstances. She speaks of “the lie that taking power from the colonialists and delivering democracy to the people are one and the same.”

(See also his related post at normblog.)

=> Today's reports indicate that, despite everything, Zimbabwe's voters handed Mugabe a decisive defeat, which represents a major achievement both for the democratic opposition and for the Zimbabwean people--but, so far, Mugabe shows no signs of being willing to relinquish his grip on power. As Norm pointed out, Mugabe and his henchmen have repeatedly warned that they would not accept electoral defeat (any more than the Burmese military dictatorship accepted Aung San Suu Kyi's overwhelming victory in Burma's last election in 1990). Now we all have to wait and see what happens next.

Yours for democracy,
Jeff Weintraub
==============================
Norman Geras (at Pajamas Media)
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Will Zimbabwe's Elections Be Free?

With a once prosperous country now ruined and hunger widespread there, and the rate of inflation by some estimates at 200,000 percent and rising, one might imagine that Robert Mugabe is on course to lose the election in Zimbabwe this weekend — especially since, as he is reported to be insisting, the election will be fair. Here are ten reasons for doubting this.

1. Observers from countries with a record of being critical of Zimbabwe’s electoral procedures are barred from any monitoring role tomorrow.

2. Zimbabwe’s police and defense chiefs have publicly stated that western-supported “puppets” — which echoes Mugabe’s own reference to the Zimbabwean opposition as “stooges” of Britain — won’t be allowed to govern the country.

3. Police, it has been reported, are to have access to voting booths, supposedly to help the handicapped.

4. Human Rights Watch says there has been widespread intimidation by supporters of the ruling party.

5. Amnesty International also has reports of arrests of opposition campaign workers.

6. The Zimbabwe Electoral Support Network reports the pulling down of opposition election posters and improper use of state resources for the ruling party’s campaign.

7. The lights were out one evening at the Victoria Falls Hotel: “As one of the managers explained: ‘The opposition is having a rally in the stadium so they have turned off the electricity. Don’t worry, it’ll be turned back on when they leave.’ Sure enough, at 6.30 p.m. sharp the lights abruptly burst into life.”

8. There are the names of dead people on the electoral rolls and of ghost voters whose addresses place them on totally empty plots of ground.

9. The opposition claim: “leaked documents showed that 9 million ballot papers were ordered for the 5.9 million people registered to vote next Saturday, and that 600,000 postal ballot papers were requisitioned for a few thousand soldiers, police, and civil servants away from their home districts and for diplomats and their families abroad.”

10. Mugabe speaks with a kind of certainty about the outcome that is troubling in the light of all the points above: “Tsvangirai will never, never rule this country.”

I hesitate to predict what is going to happen. Could this election herald the beginning of the end of Zimbabwe’s agony? I would like to be able to hope so. But I fear that it won’t — indeed that the country may be on the brink of worse yet, post-election violence either if Mugabe loses or if there is a widespread sense that he has won fraudulently. Whatever happens, the words of Petina Gappah, a Zimbabwean writer and lawyer, are apposite in the circumstances. She speaks of “the lie that taking power from the colonialists and delivering democracy to the people are one and the same.”

Norman Geras, who was born in Zimbabwe, is Professor Emeritus in Politics at the University of Manchester. He blogs at normblog.

Elections today in Zimbabwe

Dayo Olopade, writing a few days ago in the on-line New Republic, cut to the heart of the matter:

There is no room for middling outcomes—Saturday’s elections in Zimbabwe will either be historic or painfully routine.

For some elaboration, read his whole piece (below).

=> For two decades after the end of the white-minority regime in 1980 (or, at least, since the end of the brutal civil war in Matabeleland during the early 1980s), Zimbabwe looked like one of sub-Saharan Africa's post-colonial success stories. It was certainly not without problems, but it was doing relatively well economically, it produced enough food to be a significant exporter, and by regional standards it had a free press, an independent judiciary, and a relatively open political system with encouraging prospects for developing toward genuine parliamentary democracy. These were still prospects, but they looked plausible.

Since 2000, however, Zimbabwe has been systematically destroyed by its own government in an attempt to hold on to power at all costs. (For some background, see Zimbabwe, the land of dying children.)

From 1980 on the government has always been dominated by Robert Mugabe (once a leading figure in the liberation movement) and his ZANU-PF party, but in 2000 Mugabe lost a referendum to amend the constitution and then faced a strong challenge in the 2002 elections from the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (which would probably have gotten an outright majority of the votes cast, according to a consensus of informed observers, except for electoral fraud). The increasing support for the political opposition was a signal that Zimbabwe already had serious problems--of corruption, economic mismanagement, and so on--but the fact that a peaceful transfer of power even appeared to be a credible possibility was encouraging.

Instead, the response of Mugabe and ZANU-PF to this challenge, starting in 2000, has been escalating repression and a whole series of massively destructive economic, social, and political measures. And Mugabe has not even done it in the service of some utopian project fueled by ideological delirium, but simply to hold on to power by crushing the opposition and its supporters. In the process, Zimbabwe's agriculture has been destroyed, its economy has been devastated, its health system has collapsed, millions of urban residents (viewed as opposition supporters) were uprooted and expelled into the countryside after their homes were demolished in the notorious "Operation Murambatsvina" ("clean out the filth") campaign, malnutrition and starvation have become increasingly widespread despite substantial outside food aid (which the government has tried to restrict to its own supporters), and as many as 3 million refugees (out of a population that would otherwise have numbered 14-15 million) have fled to neighboring countries.

=> However, despite everything, the opposition has not been entirely crushed, and the regime still goes through the forms of holding elections. So Zimbabweans are voting today in presidential, parliamentary, and local elections.

The odds are pretty strong that, however they actually vote, the Mugabe regime will use a combination of violence, intimidation, and straightforward fraud to steal the election--as it almost certainly did in 2002. This time, as further protection against possible surprises, the regime has refused to accept independent election monitors from Europe or North America. Of course, there are outside election monitors from countries like Iran, Russia, China, and Venezuela ... and from an organization of southern African governments that have consistently run interference for Mugabe and have refused to criticize or even acknowledge his crimes.

One possible fly in the ointment, from Mugabe's point of view, is that Zimbabwe's catastrophe has become so sweeping and undeniable that there may be the first signs of a split within the ruling elite. That may (or may not) be the significance of the fact that, in addition to long-time MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai, Mugabe is also facing a challenge from a break-away ZANU-PF candidate, former Finance Minister Simba Makoni. But Makoni may simply divide the anti-Mugabe vote ... and even if that doesn't happen, it's not clear that the Mugabe regime will be willing to let go of power whatever happens.

=> While we wait to see the outcome, it's worth reading Olopade's piece and an on-target post from Andrew Sullivan, both below.

--Jeff Weintraub

=========================
Andrew Sullivan (The Daily Dish)
March 29, 2008
How To Kill A Country

Zimbabwe holds elections this Saturday. From Samantha Power's 2005 essay:

Zimbabwe is as broken as any country on the planet, it offers a testament not to some inherent African inability to govern but to a minority rule as oppressive and inconsiderate of the welfare of citizens as its ignominious white predecessor. The country's economy in 1997 was the fastest growing in all of Africa; now it is the fastest shrinking. A onetime net exporter of maize, cotton, beef, tobacco, roses, and sugarcane now exports only its educated professionals, who are fleeing by the tens of thousands. Although Zimbabwe has some of the richest farmland in Africa, children with distended bellies have begun arriving at school looking like miniature pregnant women.

How could the breadbasket of Africa have deteriorated so quickly into the continent's basket case? The answer is Robert Mugabe, now seventy-nine, who by his actions has compiled something of a "how-to" manual for national destruction. Although many of his methods have been applied elsewhere, taken as a whole his ten-step approach is more radical and more comprehensive than that of other despots. The Zimbabwe case offers some important insights. It illustrates the prime importance of accountability as an antidote to idiocy and excess. It highlights the lasting effects of decolonization—limited Western influence on the continent and a reluctance by African leaders to criticize their own. And it offers a warning about how much damage one man can do, very quickly.

=========================
New Republic (On-Line)
March 26, 2008
Department of Please Go Away
By Dayo Olopade

There is no room for middling outcomes—Saturday’s elections in Zimbabwe will either be historic or painfully routine. Clinging to the tatters of a liberation mandate claimed in Zimbabwe’s 1980 independence movement, Robert Mugabe is seeking a sixth term as head of a now-failed state. One challenger, Simba Makoni, is an exile from Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party, whose experience as finance minister will—he hopes—reverse his opponent’s prideful neglect of the national economy (“million-dollar hamburger" and all). The other, Morgan Tsvangirai, is running on a solidly populist platform that also promises relief from the embarrassing poverty that has gripped the nation for a decade.

Both insurgents offer change we may believe in. But at 84, Mugabe epitomizes the respect-your-elders culture that has continually undermined democratic institutions in sub-Saharan Africa. He is feared in the manner reserved only for the reckless sadist: in 2000, he had thousands of whites were beaten and expelled from their lands; years later, a Harare slum-razing sent additional millions into homelessness and exile; state advisers and experts—kept close by cash and threats—are said to have no say in government. And shamelessly, “old man” Mugabe still pulls rank on the trail. Just this month he endowed his loyal police force with the power to enter polling stations on Saturday, bearing arms. Of an opposition victory, he said, "It will never happen as long as we are still alive—those [of us] who planned the liberation struggle."

Emblematically, Mugabe is not even the longest-serving despot on the continent; Togolese president-for-life Gnassingbé Éyadema passed away after 38 years of rule in 2005. (Colorful loon Mswati III in Swaziland is still in the running.) Even then, democratic succession took a fight—army leaders tried an unconstitutional sleight-of-hand that the African Union, under then-Nigerian President Olesegun Obasanjo, met with swift and successful recrimination. These days, however, the AU’s ability to sanction and intervene militarily is diminished, its attention diverted toward three separate conflicts in east Africa. This vacuum has stoked the fears of independent election monitors, concerned that the winner of the vote tally will not see an inauguration day.

Of course, consensus has that the madman must be stopped. The challengers must be commended for rising to the occasion after nearly 30 years of political paralysis. Many fear, however, that the three-way race could split the “change vote,” allowing Mugabe a slim majority and foreclosing the possibility of a runoff election wherein either insurgent (or both!) could make their pitch to the Zimbabwean people. Somewhere in Africa, a blog maintained by McClatchy News services (which proved indispensable during the Kenyan election crisis), has provided good on-the-ground coverage of the election. One dispatch suggests history is there for the making:

After a catastrophic few years… Mugabe's most powerful political weapon – fear – appears to be eroding. To understand what 200,000 percent inflation means, a journalist friend I was traveling with, N., said that on Friday, he had lunch at a hotel in Harare, where a local beer cost 2 million Zimbabwean dollars (less than $1). He passed by the hotel after work the same day and the same beer was going for more than 4 million.

J., a public relations manager and Makoni supporter, came up to me at the hotel bar. "People are fed up," he said. "People used to be afraid to vote against Mugabe, but now they feel they have nothing to lose.”

Update: the Guardian reports that Mugabe is forcing locals to crumple and eat election posters belonging to his opponents. Nice.

More nut-case anti-Clinton accusations (business as usual)

Actually, this is not really news, since it is not really new. I just want to point out that this kind of stuff has been totally routine all through the campaign, to the extent that people have come to treat it as normal and even reasonable.

Former President Clinton is using divisive tactics and unfairly trying to question Barack Obama's patriotism, a retired general who has a prominent role in the Democrat's campaign said Saturday. [....]

The former president told a group of veterans Friday in Charlotte, N.C.: "I think it would be a great thing if we had an election year where you had two people who loved this country and were devoted to the interest of this country. And people could actually ask themselves who is right on these issues, instead of all this other stuff that always seems to intrude itself on our politics." [....]

"I grew up, I was going to college when Joe McCarthy was accusing good Americans of being traitors, so I've had enough of it," McPeak said. [....]

This kind of nonsense, which has become all too typical and predictable, draws on and serves to reinforce the larger phenomenon of Clinton Derangement Syndrome.

On the whole, this persistent craziness cannot be blamed on the Obama campaign, and certainly not on Obama himself. But it has come pretty steadily from a lot of pro-Obama partisans (Greg Sargent was kind enough to call them "a tiny and unrepresentative minority of Obama supporters") and, even more significantly, from the echo-chamber of political "journalists" and pundits, in which CDS is pretty pervasive and dovetails with a more general fondness for hyping pseudo-scandals and pseudo-issues. Again, the unfortunate fact is that (more or less) unhinged commentary on the Clinton/Obama contest has become so routine that it is treated as normal and even respectable--even Keith Olbermann's recent anti-Clinton rant on TV, which struck me as ludicrously over-the-edge almost to the point of self-parody, but which I've noticed a lot of Obama partisans posting approvingly.

=> So I mostly try to ignore this nonsense, but every once in a while an example comes up that makes me roll my eyes. Here's another one.

As background, let me say that I happen to think the whole story-line accusing the Clinton campaign of having systematically "played the race card" against Obama, having engaged in a strategy of "racialized" attacks against him, and so on is largely bogus--even if one excepts a small number of specific incidents that might possibly be ambiguous in this respect, though they have definitely been overblown, obsessively and tendentiously over-interpreted, and excessively extrapolated. (For some of the reasons why I find the dominant propaganda line unconvincing, interested readers might consult a few careful and sensible discussions of these issues by Clive Crook, who favors Obama over Clinton; Kevin Drum, who voted for Obama in the California primary; and Greg Sargent, who seems to be fairly impartial.) But I know that some otherwise intelligent and serious people have bought into this story-line, so it's hypothetically possible that I am mistaken on this point. And I realize that this myth has been hardening into conventional wisdom by dint of continual repetition, so it's not surprising that people might treat this misleading cliché as though it were an established fact. OK, fine.

But even after granting all these allowances, there is also such a thing as going over the edge with this relentless race-card-baiting of the Clinton campaign. For example:

Andrew Sullivan, who barely even tries to pretend any more that his case of CDS is out of control, recently quoted from a piece by Bob Beckel (a self-described liberal Democrat) in which Beckel tossed out the following, just in passing:

If the Clinton campaign is caught using the race card, particularly after Bill Clinton's 'cracker tour' of South Carolina, it will assure a Clinton defeat in November. Not only will blacks boycott the polls, so will many of the millions of young voters Obama has brought into the political process.

"Bill Clinton's 'cracker tour' of South Carolina"? What is this bullshit? Am I the only one who thinks there's something a little off-putting, poisonous, and self-destructive about Democrats peddling this kind of stuff? Just asking ...

=> Today Kevin Drum issued a wise but probably fruitless appeal in a post on his Washington Monthly blog:

My fellow Obama supporters need to get a grip. I know that resistance to CDS seems futile these days, but resist anyway!

Good advice, but I won't hold my breath.

And the other side can sometimes benefit from similar advice (as Geraldine Ferraro's recent public-tantrum debacle illustrates). A lot of people need to get a grip on themselves; need to stop letting themselves be so easily manipulated by news-media bias, sensationalism, and superficial scandal-mongering; and need to keep their own biases and political passions under a little control.

Yours for reality-based discourse & political sanity,
Jeff Weintraub

P.S. To be fair to Andrew Sullivan, I notice that he did feel compelled to defend Bill Clinton against McPeak's wild charge of McCarthyism, and his post about this begins quite sensibly:

You may want to sit down, but I read the following Bill Clinton remarks yesterday and didn't see anything untoward about them [....] I don't think he's implying that Obama doesn't love his country or is not devoted to the interest of this country (although you could, with some strain, parse it that way). He's actually hoping for a substantive, non-swift-boating, non-Coulter, non-Hannity campaign. It's pretty close to my own hope for an Obama-McCain race. [....]

But then the strain of trying to be fair to Clinton proves too much to withstand, and the sensible tone disappears. By the end of his post, a few paragraphs later, Sullivan is honest and self-aware enough to admit the obvious:

Oh, well, I tried to defend the Clintons and look where I ended up. Better luck next time.

As I said, I won't hold my breath.

China's role in the Darfur atrocity - Propaganda and reality (Eric Reeves)

A compact and powerful restatement of the crucial issues by Eric Reeves. Since there are so many efforts to obfuscate, distort, and distract from these basic realities--and from other key dimensions of the ongoing Darfur catastrophe, too--this cogent analysis deserves careful reading.

Of course, China's support for the genocidal Khartoum regime is only one piece of the overall puzzle. But as Reeves explains once again, it's an important piece--and one that's worth trying to change.

Yours for reality-based discourse,
Jeff Weintraub
=========================
Boston Globe
March 22, 2008
China's genocide Games
By Eric Reeves

IN PREPARING to host the 2008 Summer Olympics, China has engaged in a massive campaign to dissemble its role in the Darfur genocide in western Sudan, now entering its sixth year. Such a task was unexpected by Beijing. The regime knew it would encounter strenuous protests over the continuing destruction of Tibet, although the recent violent crackdown in Lhasa suggests Beijing hadn't anticipated how deeply Tibetan anger runs. China's leaders also knew they would draw fierce protests over their callous support of the brutal Burmese junta. Condemnation of Beijing's own gross domestic human rights abuses was equally predictable. But the effectiveness of Darfur advocacy in highlighting China's role in Sudan took Beijing by surprise. Steven Spielberg's resignation as an artistic director for the Games - a decision of conscience stressing China's role in Darfur - sharply intensified China's dismay.

Thus Beijing has pulled out all the stops to counter advocacy success in emphasizing China's longstanding diplomatic protection and economic support for the Islamist regime in Khartoum. Though Khartoum's genocidal counterinsurgency campaign against Darfur's African tribes has been authoritatively documented for years, Beijing seeks to obscure this grim reality through distortion, half-truths, and outright mendacity. In turn, nothing encourages Khartoum more than China's refusal to speak honestly about violent human destruction in Darfur, where growing insecurity has brought the world's largest humanitarian operation to the brink of collapse.

Why does China airbrush away Darfur's genocidal realities? Why has Beijing been Khartoum's largest weapons supplier over the past decade? Why has China repeatedly wielded a veto threat at the UN Security Council as the world body vainly struggles to bring pressure to bear on Khartoum? The answer lies in China's thirst for Sudanese crude oil.

Since the beginning of serious oil development in the 1990s, China has been the dominant player in an oil production consortium located mainly in southern Sudan. China was also complicit in the scorched-earth clearances that were part of oil development until the north-south peace agreement of 2005. What China got for its ruthlessness was prime access to the 500,000 barrels of crude that Sudan now produces daily. Given the voracious growth in China's oil consumption, Beijing has determined that ignoring gross human rights abuses in Sudan is simply a cost of doing business.

This is why China has offered unstinting diplomatic protection to Khartoum, most consequentially at the Security Council. And now in defense of this destructive protectionist policy, China offers up deliberate distortions of Darfur's terrible truths. Thus Khartoum's adamant refusal to accept desperately needed non-African troops and specialists for a UN-authorized peace support operation becomes a mere "technical" problem, according to Liu Guijin, China's Darfur envoy. But this is false. The regime's refusal to accept the UN-proposed roster of troop-contributing countries has largely paralyzed deployment of the UN/African Union Mission in Darfur, authorized by the Security Council last July. Britain's UN ambassador spoke for many when he declared this year that Khartoum had made a "political decision" to obstruct the deployment. China blames the "international community" for not pressuring rebel groups in Darfur to negotiate an end to the conflict. While there is some justification to this charge, the real problem lies in China's refusal to countenance sanctions that might pressure Khartoum to engage in good-faith diplomacy. China will not allow even targeted sanctions against regime officials most responsible for flagrant violations of international humanitarian law.

Confident that China will block punitive actions, Khartoum recently resumed savage civilian clearances in West Darfur, deploying regular military forces and Arab militia proxies. Tens of thousands of African civilians were displaced by ground and air attacks, and hundreds were killed; towns, villages, and camps for displaced persons were destroyed; humanitarian aid was blocked. Only immense confidence in China's diplomatic protection emboldened the regime to resume such large-scale genocidal destruction. If China is to be a legitimate host of the 2008 Olympics, the preeminent event in international sports, it cannot be complicit in the ultimate international crime - genocide. The world community must respond more forcefully to this intolerable contradiction.

Eric Reeves is author of "A Long Day's Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide."

So did Tibet swing the Taiwanese election? - The Result

The sequel to last night's post, Will Tibet swing the Taiwanese election? ...

The Result (3/22/08): In the end, the answer to that last question was no. Ma and the Nationalists won their landslide victory after all.

Ma Ying-jeou, a Harvard-educated lawyer and former Taipei mayor from the Nationalist Party, won by a convincing margin. [....] With all votes counted, Mr. Ma prevailed 58.45 percent to 41.55 percent and Mr. Hsieh quickly conceded defeat. [....]

Both parties’ polls showed an increasingly close race in the final days of campaigning, in contrast with the last polls by media organizations nearly two weeks ago, which showed Mr. Ma ahead by 20 percent. But in election day interviews, voters echoed Mr. Ma’s stance that closer relations with the mainland and its fast-growing economy represent the island’s best hope of returning to the rapid economic growth it enjoyed until the late 1990s.

Jason Lin, a 41-year-old interior designer, said as he left a polling place in Taipei that he had always voted for the Democratic Progressive Party until this year and remains a member of the party. But he crossed party lines to vote for Mr. Ma on Saturday because he was convinced that Taiwan’s economic survival depended on closer ties.

“If we don’t get into China’s market, we are locked into our own country,” he said. [....]

Two controversial referendums, calling for Taiwan to apply for membership in the United Nations, also fell well short of passage. [....]

Ma and the Nationalists appear to have convinced a lot of 'native' Taiwanese that they would do a better job of promoting Taiwan's long-term economic interests, both domestically and in terms of relations with China. But Ma also seems to have gone out of his way to convince voters that he would not simply be a patsy for China, and apparently he did that with some success.

Mr. Ma has taken a more cautious approach to the mainland [than previous Kuomintang candidates--JW], attending annual vigils for those killed during the Tiananmen Square killings in Beijing in 1989 and denouncing the mainland’s repression of the Falun Gong spiritual movement over the past decade. During the campaign, he ruled out any discussion of political reunification while calling for the introduction of direct, regularly scheduled flights to Shanghai and Beijing and an end to Taiwan’s extensive limits on its companies’ ability to invest on the mainland.

Chinese government officials had no immediate response to the election results on Saturday evening, but had made little secret of their hope that he would win.

“China has a love-hate relationship with Ma — when I visited China last November, they criticized Ma a lot, and then asked me to vote for Ma,” said Yen Chen-Shen, a political scientist at National Chengchi University.

Actually, Ma's victory is probably a source of satisfaction to both the Chinese and the US governments. The last thing the US government wants is for the Taiwanese to upset China, so they have become increasingly irritated with the DPP. But if Ma does his job, he is likely to do things that will irritate both Beijing and Washington, too.

Overall, whatever one thinks about the outcome of this particular election, it is hard to avoid reflecting that Taiwan seems to have developed a surprisingly stable and mature democratic polity--all things considered--in a pretty short time.

--Jeff Weintraub

Will Tibet swing the Taiwanese election?

While Americans (and everyone else) remain remain fascinated by the apparently never-ending drama of the US Presidential election, there are also good reasons to be interested in Taiwan's Presidential election. The voting takes place on Saturday (which, in Taiwan, has already started).

My friend Erik Ringmar, a peripatetic political scientist from Sweden who taught for 12 years at the London School of Economics (until he and the LSE broke off their relationship in a less than friendly manner, as story dealt with along with much else in his book A Blogger's Manifesto), has been a professor at the National Chiao Tung University in Hsinchu, Taiwan, since the spring of 2007, so he is on the spot. Today Erik offered his take on the background and significance of the election (on his always interesting blog, Too Many Mangoes).
-----------------------------------
Erik Ringmar / 林瑞谷
Friday, March 21st, 2008
the big one

Tomorrow is the big one — the presidential elections here in Taiwan. The people will decide to vote for Frank Xie, the candidate of DPP [Democratic Progressive Party], , the independence party, or for Ma Ying Jiu, the KMT, Guomingdang, candidate. [JW: For you history buffs, that used to be transliterated Kuomintang--the Chinese Nationalist Party long headed by Chiang Kai-shek.]

[JW: A snappy English-language TV-interview video with Ma is included in Erik's post.]

To a large extent people’s choices are determined by questions of who they, and Taiwan, really are. If your family came here with KMT in 1949 and you believe Taiwan is a part of China, you are for Ma. If your family has deeper Taiwanese roots, and you believe Taiwan is an independent country, you are for Xie [though this socio-political cleavage seems to be getting less sharply defined than it once was--JW]. As always when questions of people’s identities are involved, sentiments run very high.

I sympathize very strongly with the DPP’s’ point of view (and I have several good friends who are fervent DPP supporters). They feel their country was taken over by outsiders in 1949. Outsiders, moreover, who ran Taiwan like a dictatorship for some 40 years, imprisoning and killing people. Still to this day, DPP supporters tend to be under-dogs. On average they have lower socio-economic position and lower education. They want their dignity and their island back. All of this makes a lot of sense.

However, I’m really rather hoping Ma and KMT will win. To isolate yourself from China, as the current DPP president Chen Shiu-bian has done, is a very stupid policy which has strongly negative economic effects and which invites all kinds of unpleasant sabre-rattling. It’s outrageous, for example, that Taiwan is the only country in the world which is trying to limit the number of Chinese students and that there are no direct flights to the mainland. Relations to China have to be permanently sorted out and all military threats removed. Yes, it’s good for Taiwan. Only Ma and KMT is in a position to do that.
-----------------------------------

=> According to the public opinion polls, until recently most Taiwanese voters seemed to agree with this conclusion (and/or were unhappy with the DPP for other reasons). Ma and his Nationalist Party appeared to be cruising toward a landslide victory. During the past week, however, events on the far side of China--in Tibet--seem to have had had a major impact on Taiwan's political mood. According to Friday's New York Times:

Violent unrest in Tibet has created shock waves in another volatile region on China’s periphery, shaking up the presidential election in Taiwan and sapping support for the candidate Beijing had hoped would win handily.

The suppression of Tibet protests by Chinese security forces, as well as missteps by the Nationalist Party, which Beijing favors, have nearly erased what had seemed like an insuperable lead for Ma Ying-jeou, the Harvard-educated lawyer who has been the front-runner in the race.

Concern that China’s crackdown could herald a tougher line on outlying regions that Beijing claims as sovereign territory, including Taiwan, has become the most contested campaign issue ahead of Saturday’s election. [....]

Even if Mr. Ma wins, the election may now give him a weaker mandate for his goal of pursuing closer economic ties and reduced diplomatic tensions with China.

A loss by Mr. Ma, which campaign analysts say is unlikely but now possible, would be a major setback for China’s leaders. They have cultivated the Nationalists in recent years to undermine Taiwan’s current pro-independence president, Chen Shui-bian, and reduce the chances that his Democratic Progressive Party will hold the presidency after Mr. Chen’s mandatory retirement.

The stirring up of the election on Taiwan, which Beijing has long considered its top national security priority, is a potentially heavy price for the Tibetan unrest and the ensuing police action. [....]

If so, that might show that there is some justice in the world. But there's not really much justice in the world, so maybe it won't happen after all.

Both the Nationalists and the Democratic Progressive Party promise to reduce tensions between Taiwan and China. But China has been wary of the Democratic Progressive Party’s presidential candidate, Frank Hsieh, who inherits a volatile coalition that includes many native Taiwanese who favor outright independence from China.

Mr. Hsieh and his party, with help from Mr. Chen’s ministers, have moved swiftly to turn Tibet into a central campaign issue. They contend that Tibet’s fate is a warning of Taiwan’s future if it does not stand up to Beijing. [....]

Mr. Hsieh abruptly turned a campaign rally in Taipei on Wednesday night into a candlelight vigil for Tibetans who have been killed, injured or detained during the Chinese crackdown. Party activists unfurled a huge Tibetan flag, and Tibetan students sang a Tibetan anthem. [....]

This is heavy stuff. These actions must be tapping genuine popular feelings of solidarity (or anxious identification) with Tibetans, because Ma has also moved to accommodate them.

With politicians from both parties concluding that the Tibet issue is hurting the Nationalists, Mr. Ma has focused on damage control. To the surprise of many even in his own party, he warned this week that Taiwan might boycott the Olympics if the Chinese crackdown in Tibet turned more draconian and if conditions there deteriorated further.

Speaking for a very non-expert perspective, this strikes me as a remarkable gambit for a Nationalist candidate.

Known for his gentlemanly style, his reluctance to engage in personal attacks on political adversaries and his long-held desire for more cordial relations with the mainland, Mr. Ma has also rushed to distance himself from Beijing by using uncharacteristically harsh language.

When Prime Minister Wen Jiabao of China said Tuesday that Taiwan’s future should be decided by people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, and not just by Taiwan residents, Mr. Ma condemned what he described as a “ruthless, irrational, arrogant, foolish and self-righteous comment.” Mr. Hsieh has rejected any boycott of the Olympics.

Opinion polls showed Mr. Ma with a lead of up to 20 percentage points last week; Taiwan’s election laws do not allow the release of polls during the final 10 days before voting.

So now it's up to the voters. Will Tibet swing the Taiwanese election? Stay tuned.

Yours for democracy,
Jeff Weintraub

The Result (3/22/08): In the end, the answer to that last question was no. Ma and the Nationalists won their landslide victory after all.

Ma Ying-jeou, a Harvard-educated lawyer and former Taipei mayor from the Nationalist Party, won by a convincing margin. [....] With all votes counted, Mr. Ma prevailed 58.45 percent to 41.55 percent and Mr. Hsieh quickly conceded defeat. [....]

Both parties’ polls showed an increasingly close race in the final days of campaigning, in contrast with the last polls by media organizations nearly two weeks ago, which showed Mr. Ma ahead by 20 percent. But in election day interviews, voters echoed Mr. Ma’s stance that closer relations with the mainland and its fast-growing economy represent the island’s best hope of returning to the rapid economic growth it enjoyed until the late 1990s.

Jason Lin, a 41-year-old interior designer, said as he left a polling place in Taipei that he had always voted for the Democratic Progressive Party until this year and remains a member of the party. But he crossed party lines to vote for Mr. Ma on Saturday because he was convinced that Taiwan’s economic survival depended on closer ties.

“If we don’t get into China’s market, we are locked into our own country,” he said. [....]

Two controversial referendums, calling for Taiwan to apply for membership in the United Nations, also fell well short of passage. [....]

Ma and the Nationalists appear to have convinced a lot of 'native' Taiwanese that they would do a better job of promoting Taiwan's long-term economic interests, both domestically and in terms of relations with China. But Ma also seems to have gone out of his way to convince voters that he would not simply be a patsy for China, and apparently he did so with some success.

Mr. Ma has taken a more cautious approach to the mainland [than previous Kuomintang candidates--JW], attending annual vigils for those killed during the Tiananmen Square killings in Beijing in 1989 and denouncing the mainland’s repression of the Falun Gong spiritual movement over the past decade. During the campaign, he ruled out any discussion of political reunification while calling for the introduction of direct, regularly scheduled flights to Shanghai and Beijing and an end to Taiwan’s extensive limits on its companies’ ability to invest on the mainland.

Chinese government officials had no immediate response to the election results on Saturday evening, but had made little secret of their hope that he would win.

“China has a love-hate relationship with Ma — when I visited China last November, they criticized Ma a lot, and then asked me to vote for Ma,” said Yen Chen-Shen, a political scientist at National Chengchi University.

Actually, Ma's victory is probably a source of satisfaction to both the Chinese and the US governments. The last thing the US government wants is for the Taiwanese to upset China, so they have become increasingly irritated with the DPP. But if Ma does his job, he is likely to do things that will irritate both Beijing and Washington, too.

Overall, whatever one thinks about the outcome of this particular election, it is hard to avoid reflecting that Taiwan seems to have developed a surprisingly stable and mature democratic polity--all things considered--in a pretty short time.
==============================
New York Times
Friday, March 21, 2008
China Tensions Could Sway Vote in Taiwan
By Keith Bradsher

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Violent unrest in Tibet has created shock waves in another volatile region on China’s periphery, shaking up the presidential election in Taiwan and sapping support for the candidate Beijing had hoped would win handily.

The suppression of Tibet protests by Chinese security forces, as well as missteps by the Nationalist Party, which Beijing favors, have nearly erased what had seemed like an insuperable lead for Ma Ying-jeou, the Harvard-educated lawyer who has been the front-runner in the race.

Concern that China’s crackdown could herald a tougher line on outlying regions that Beijing claims as sovereign territory, including Taiwan, has become the most contested campaign issue ahead of Saturday’s election.

On Thursday, China acknowledged for the first time that security forces had opened fire on Tibetan protesters in Sichuan Province, while also saying that protests had spread to several areas of China where ethnic Tibetans live.

Even if Mr. Ma wins, the election may now give him a weaker mandate for his goal of pursuing closer economic ties and reduced diplomatic tensions with China.

A loss by Mr. Ma, which campaign analysts say is unlikely but now possible, would be a major setback for China’s leaders. They have cultivated the Nationalists in recent years to undermine Taiwan’s current pro-independence president, Chen Shui-bian, and reduce the chances that his Democratic Progressive Party will hold the presidency after Mr. Chen’s mandatory retirement.

The stirring up of the election on Taiwan, which Beijing has long considered its top national security priority, is a potentially heavy price for the Tibetan unrest and the ensuing police action. Beijing also faces a stronger international outcry over its human rights record and scattered calls to boycott the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympic Games, which China hopes will showcase the country’s rapid development.

Both the Nationalists and the Democratic Progressive Party promise to reduce tensions between Taiwan and China. But China has been wary of the Democratic Progressive Party’s presidential candidate, Frank Hsieh, who inherits a volatile coalition that includes many native Taiwanese who favor outright independence from China.

Mr. Hsieh and his party, with help from Mr. Chen’s ministers, have moved swiftly to turn Tibet into a central campaign issue. They contend that Tibet’s fate is a warning of Taiwan’s future if it does not stand up to Beijing.

“What has happened in Tibet in the past three decades, and what is going on now, is a warning to us,” said Shieh Jhy-wey, the minister of information and a Democratic Progressive Party member who takes a hard line toward Beijing. “We don’t want to have the same fate as Tibet.”

Mr. Hsieh abruptly turned a campaign rally in Taipei on Wednesday night into a candlelight vigil for Tibetans who have been killed, injured or detained during the Chinese crackdown. Party activists unfurled a huge Tibetan flag, and Tibetan students sang a Tibetan anthem.

A huge television screen at the rally showed a documentary on Tibetan history provided by the Taiwan office of the Dalai Lama, as well as a short video of Chinese soldiers mistreating Tibetans. Mr. Hsieh’s running mate, Su Tseng-chang, has scheduled a “Support Tibet” rally for Friday morning while Mr. Hsieh has scheduled a “Protect Taiwan Democracy” election-eve rally in Taipei for Friday.

With politicians from both parties concluding that the Tibet issue is hurting the Nationalists, Mr. Ma has focused on damage control. To the surprise of many even in his own party, he warned this week that Taiwan might boycott the Olympics if the Chinese crackdown in Tibet turned more draconian and if conditions there deteriorated further.

Known for his gentlemanly style, his reluctance to engage in personal attacks on political adversaries and his long-held desire for more cordial relations with the mainland, Mr. Ma has also rushed to distance himself from Beijing by using uncharacteristically harsh language.

When Prime Minister Wen Jiabao of China said Tuesday that Taiwan’s future should be decided by people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, and not just by Taiwan residents, Mr. Ma condemned what he described as a “ruthless, irrational, arrogant, foolish and self-righteous comment.” Mr. Hsieh has rejected any boycott of the Olympics.

Opinion polls showed Mr. Ma with a lead of up to 20 percentage points last week; Taiwan’s election laws do not allow the release of polls during the final 10 days before voting.

But surveys by both parties show that more than half of that lead has evaporated. Mr. Ma is now ahead by a more slender margin because of Tibet and because of an embarrassing incident in which four Nationalist lawmakers were caught roaming through the Democratic Progressive Party’s headquarters, politicians and political analysts said.

The closer race has reinvigorated the Democratic Progressive Party, which had been deeply gloomy after badly losing a January vote for the legislature. “We have narrowed the gap significantly since January and I believe the final outcome will be very close,” said Hsiao Bi-khim, the international affairs director of Mr. Hsieh’s campaign.

Su Chi, a Nationalist lawmaker and deputy campaign manager for Mr. Ma, said that Mr. Ma’s lead had narrowed in the last few days, but added that this was to be expected.

Many Democratic Progressive Party supporters did not vote in the legislative elections because they were disillusioned with corruption cases involving the current government, but they are now becoming more active as Mr. Hsieh has campaigned aggressively, Mr. Su said, adding that he still thought Mr. Ma would win.

Government ministers have helped Mr. Hsieh by repeatedly drawing attention to the difficulties in Tibet.

At a news conference on Thursday, Chen Ming-tong, the chairman of the Mainland Affairs Council, the ministry responsible for relations with the mainland, called for the international community to put more pressure on China to begin a dialogue with the Dalai Lama, the leader of Tibet’s government in exile.

Mr. Hsieh received an influential endorsement on Thursday. Lee Teng-hui, a former Nationalist president of Taiwan who now favors much greater political independence from the mainland, said he would vote for Mr. Hsieh.

The Nationalists and two affiliated minor parties captured three-quarters of the seats in the legislature in January’s elections, in a crushing defeat for the Democratic Progressive Party. The Nationalists’ capitalized on voters’ concerns about stagnant household incomes and paralysis in contacts with the fast-growing mainland economy — two potent issues that could still produce a victory for Mr. Ma on Saturday.

But the incident at Mr. Hsieh’s offices last week helped his party warn voters against giving too much power to the opposition. Four Nationalist lawmakers roamed through Mr. Hsieh’s offices in an attempt to document whether the building lease complied with election laws.

Mr. Hsieh’s aides trapped the four in an elevator, accused them of trespassing and called the police. A crowd of Democratic Progressive Party supporters formed and smashed the windshield of one of the police cars that rescued the four; Mr. Ma has apologized repeatedly since then.

Mr. Hsieh has staked out a more moderate position toward Beijing than Mr. Chen has. Mr. Ma has taken positions similar to Mr. Hsieh’s on economic issues, and he said that he would not seek political reunification with the mainland, still the goal of many Nationalists.

Many of the two men’s proposals, like direct flights to China, would require talks with Beijing, and are more likely to happen if Mr. Ma is elected because mainland officials have been reluctant to have formal contacts with the Democratic Progressive Party.