Link Banana

Count me among those opposed to this.

JOHANNESBURG — After more than a month’s delay, Zimbabwe officially announced the results of the March 29 presidential elections on Friday, saying that the opposition candidate had won but by not enough to avoid a runoff against President Robert Mugabe.

Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, won 47.9 percent of the vote, compared with Mr. Mugabe’s 43.2 percent, the electoral commission’s chief elections officer, Lovemore Sekeramayi, told reporters.

Ministers in Mr. Mugabe’s government had maintained for weeks that a runoff would be necessary against Mr. Tsvangirai.

Though it looks bad, The Economist argues that it’s not as bad as it looks.

Running on a separate list from the president’s supporters, powerful principlists such as Ali Larijani, Iran’s former nuclear negotiator, attacked Mr Ahmadinejad for the alleged incompetence of his economic management, which has pushed inflation close to 20%, and for needlessly antagonising foreign powers with inflammatory rhetoric. Aware that enthusiasm for the president has waned, even among the provincial poor who make up his strongest constituency, most conservative candidates tried to distance themselves from Mr Ahmadinejad, instead emphasising their closeness to Ayatollah Khamenei.

The Economist tackles the troubling situation in Zimbabwe and the hopeful — if remote — possibility that Robert Mugabe may finally have to leave office.

ROBERT MUGABE, Zimbabwe’s ageing president, celebrated his official birthday at the weekend. The 84-year-old threw a party at Beitbridge, on the border with South Africa, and launched his campaign for a sixth term in office. He has ruled for nearly three decades and expects to win re-election in a general and presidential election in March. He rehearsed his usual stump speech, hurling abuse at anyone who dares to stand up to him (he called one opposition leader, Simba Makoni, a “prostitute” and a puffed up frog) and blaming outsiders—notably George Bush and Britain’s Gordon Brown—for his country’s ever more miserable economic collapse.

Or so says Slate’s Jack Shafer. He goes onto assert that everyone — both the public and journalists — should stop pretending that that’s not true.

Consider the fullness of the metaphor: A bunch of perfectly groomed and tended politicians gather at the starting gate. They all have track records and somebody has placed a bet on them. When the gun sounds, they run like Seabiscuit, frothing and jostling. Some pull up lame before the race concludes. The event, which seems to go on forever, can be a blowout or end in a photo finish. The winner takes a victory bow as the losers regroup for the next heat or depart for the glue factory.

During an actual horse race, nobody wants to hear the announcer drone on about the ponies’ dietary regimes. They want to know who’s winning, who’s gaining, who’s in the thick of it, and who can be written off. Are the front-runners burning themselves out and letting a back marker take the prize?

The Economist’s Charlemagne (Europe) column provides an interesting and useful summary of how the America’s election madness is seen on the continent.

VOTERS of America, well done: you are less racist (or sexist) than Europeans had feared. Remember, though, that you are rather naive: please try to pick a competent president this time. This dismissive summary, combining condescension with distrust, captures all too many European reactions to the duel between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination in this year’s presidential election (and, given the gulf between most Europeans and the Republicans, this is the contest to be Europe’s preferred candidate as well—although a few Europeans retain a soft spot for John McCain).

Correspondent Diaries are one of the best features of the The Economist’s website, and this weeks was especially interesting to me. The magazine’s South-East Asia correspondent spent some time in the Isaan region of Thailand before the recent election, and gives a very interesting picture of what many Bangkok residents think is the country’s most backward region.

Until the early 19th century Isaan was a sort of buffer zone between the kingdoms of Siam (Thailand’s old name) and Laos. After Siam annexed the region, in 1827, it suffered various uprisings against the Bangkok bureaucracy’s domination and centralisation. It continued to be a hotbed of radicalism until the 1960s and 1970s, when it was one of the battlegrounds for the Thai state’s fight against a communist insurgency.

Now, unlike in Thailand’s strife-torn southern provinces (where the locals are mostly Muslim and ethnically Malay), there is little talk of Isaan separatism. Isaan’s people are proud of their traditions but they are also loyal Thais, as demonstrated by the ever-present portraits of King Bhumibol in shops, homes and public places.

Troy Patterson, Slate’s TV critic, has a fun little essay about the hypnotic power of C-SPAN’s unblinking campaign coverage:

That night in September found Romney working the town of Littleton, N.H., at a leisurely pace. There he was in a candy store. “This should be a red state, so I’m only going to get red candy,” he vowed, plastic bag in hand, scooping up Swedish fish. “You’ve got these lids on real tight. Is that to preserve freshness?” His total was $11.52, and when it came time to pay, he reached into the leave-a-penny-take-a-penny cup for the two cents. I wondered whether to read the gesture as a proud statement of fiscal prudence or an unwitting signal that he’s apt to support socialist schemes.

The BBC is reporting:

Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki says he is ready to form a government of national unity, an official statement said. […]

But opposition leader Raila Odinga says Mr Kibaki must step down as president and that his preferred option remains for new elections to be held.

I have no doubt that this comes after at least some outside pressure. And though it’s clearly not the best outcome (which would be a truly fair election), it could certainly be better than continued violence and ethnic conflict.

Musharref’s regime has decided to delay the parlimentary election, which were to take place this week, until February 18. Since the death of Benazir Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif’s decision not to run, the ascent of Benazir’s son and husband to control of the PPP (Pakistan’s largest party), and the continued low-level violence they claim to have seen a situation too dangerous to hold elections in. Now Sharif and other other parties say they will participate despite their dissatisfaction with the delay (they feel it will moderate now boiling anger at the ruling party).

In Kenya’s recent election, the incumbent Mwai Kibaki, a Kikuyu, was victorious over the favored and hoped-for Raila Odinga. Odinga’s an ethnic Luo (like Barack Obama’s father) and after the probably-rigged election was awarded to Kibaki, riot police were immediately dispatched for fear of non-Kikuyu riots. Since then, many have died, and this New York Times report swings for the fences with a doozie of a line — which I can only hope will prove overstated — 

“We’ve had tribal fighting before, but never like this,” said Abdalla Bujra, a retired Kenyan professor who runs a democracy-building organization.

As for the people burned alive in the church, Mr. Bujra echoed what many Kenyans were thinking: “It reminds me of Rwanda.”