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Mnangagwa going to win elections without cheating- UK professor

President Emmerson Mnangagwa is going to win the coming elections on 30 July without cheating because he has made headroom which the opposition has not been able to achieve, Stephen Chan, a professor at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies said today.

Chan, the co-author of a book: Why Mugabe won, which analyses why the Movement for Democratic Change lost the 2013 elections despite making headway in 2008, said the opposition did not have a very good beginning to its campaign.

“It’s former leader died without anointing a successor; there have been all kinds of squabbles as to who that successor should be and their late start means that they may not be able to make up the headroom that Mnangagwa has been able to achieve. So without needing to cheat, I think the ruling party is likely to win this particular election,” Chan said.

MDC Alliance leader insists that he is only going to lose the elections if they are rigged.

He is focusing on the printing of ballot papers saying that is where the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission and the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front want to rig.

In his book, co-authored with Julia Gallagher, Chan argues that “one of the hazards of working particularly in Zimbabwe is the rumour mill that envelopes all political society”.

“in some ways, the rumour mill determines political society as its members react to rumours that someone or another is plotting against them, or, if someone is not plotting against them whether or not they have diminished in importance to feature no longer in a rival’s calculations.”

 

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This post was last modified on July 10, 2018 1:32 pm

Charles Rukuni

The Insider is a political and business bulletin about Zimbabwe, edited by Charles Rukuni. Founded in 1990, it was a printed 12-page subscription only newsletter until 2003 when Zimbabwe's hyper-inflation made it impossible to continue printing.

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