Analyst says Mugabe has staged a ‘coup by veto’
By Lance Guma
08 April 2008

Briggs Bomba, a programme associate with the US based Africa Action advocacy group, says Robert Mugabe and Zanu PF are now running the country illegally and have staged what is known as a ‘coup by veto.’ Ten days after Zimbabweans cast their votes in harmonized presidential, parliamentary, senate and council elections Mugabe’s regime continues to keep a lid on the all-important presidential result. Bomba says the situation has reminded many of the old adage, ‘It’s not the people who vote that count, but the people who count the votes.’ He told Newsreel that, ‘Mugabe’s crafty actions since the elections evidently show he is determined to win the count, after losing the elections.’

Bomba urged the opposition, ‘to show leadership at this critical time,’ saying Mugabe was clearly testing the political temperature to see how far he could push against the people’s will. He said the good news for the opposition was that Mugabe’s regime was broke and could not sustain a long period of repression if people took up the mantle and fought back. Bomba said Tsvangirai’s pre-election call for people to remain behind at the polling stations and defend their votes was the right strategy and this now needed to be developed further into some form of people power. He said the country’s courts were compromised and by engaging in litigation this was, ‘disarming the people’s vigilance,’ and creating a sideshow.

Commenting on state media reports that Zanu PF had effectively ordered the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission not to announce the results, Bomba said ZEC, as a constitutionally mandated body, is supposed to administer elections independently and should not be taking instructions from one of the contestants. ‘It is this rotten state of democratic institutions and the subordination of state bodies to the ruling party that is at the heart of the country’s decay,’ he added.