A sneaky Israeli election management company was hired to play sophisticated games (were there actually a million extra votes?) The voter’s roll was never published. When the race began, there were reminders of 2008. A party-state online newspaper even manufactured a US poll predicting a massive victory.
Most tragically, unity talks among the opposition party amounted to nothing, and the main MDC seemed to implode. One usually well-informed observer claimed the MDC had not bothered to register voters. As Phillan Zamchiya put it, the match was a technical knockout.
All in all, if the Donald Trumps of the world want to find out how the masters of manufacturing elections work, they had better visit Zimbabwe before their internecine struggles close them down.
By David B. Moore. This article was reproduced from The Conversation
Ed: Fact- ZAPU was banned in 1962.
Operation Murambatsvina was carried out in May 2005 almost two months after the Parliamentary elections which ZANU-PF had won by a two-thirds majority.
The MDC-T won the 2008 Parliamentary elections and the first round of the presidential elections. Tsvangirai could not take over on a technicality- part of the rigging- because he had not polled the 50 percent plus 1 majority.
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