Zimbabwe elections

Last week official or semi-official spokesmen for the Zimbabwe electoral commission criticised those who imputed sinister motives for the delay in releasing the election results. There were no sinister motives, he said, and the delay was due to the thoroughness in counting. According to the constitution they had six days in which to accomplish the counting and release the results, so everyone should be patient and give the electroal commission the time needed to complete the task.

But the allotted six days have now passed, and still the results have not been released.

Can we start imputing sinister motives now?

It's beginning to look as bad as the US Presidential election of 2000.

And still the media are jumping the gun, and speculating about "run-off" elections. One cannot begin to talk about "run-off" elections until the results are known.

But it begins to look more and more like Algeria a few years ago, or Lesotho in 1970, when the "wrong" party was seen to be losing the election, and the previously ruling party cancelled the election staged a coup to remain in power.