The Truth About Zimbabwe's Last Election
Between the March 29 elections and the June 27 elections in Zimbabwe this year, Morgan Tsvangirai worked very closely with Simba Makoni in trying to find a solution to the quandry that the country found itself in. It is an untold but extremely interesting story. Perhaps I should start by reminding the people that the provision for a run-off had never existed in the Zimbabwe electoral process before. Our system, modelled on the British system, was a "first-past-the-post" system, where, in a field of, say, 5 candidates, the one with the most votes would be declared president, even if his percentage was 28%, as happened with Mwanawasa in Zambia. It was Mr Tsvangirai and the MDC-T who suggested to the facilitator, President Thabo Mbeki, that this system should be scrapped and replaced with the 50 plus one model. It was the main MDC who insisted that no one could say they had a mandate to rule the country if they did not get at more than 50% of the popular vote. Rightly, you may a...