On June 27 Morgan Tsvangirai will again face-off against Zimbabwe's long-time president Robert Mugabe. Tsvangirai's opposition MDC party received the most votes in the first round of elections in March, but fell short of the 50% plus one majority needed to gain the presidency outright.
That is if the results announced by the government are to be believed - Tsvangirai for one thinks that he won the election outright and that Mugabe's government worked for weeks to rig the results. Tsvangirai announced yesterday that he would return to Zimbabwe to stand in the run-off election. For the past two weeks he and his supporters debated whether to run or not and he has been in a brief self-imposed exile. Mugabe's security forces have been accused of widespread attacks on opposition supporters following the March election.
Even now there is a lot of doubt over whether a fair election can be held. By law the runoff should take place within three weeks of the posting of the results from the first round - since the results were posted on May 2, the runoff should take place by May 23. Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF party though has delayed the runoff until June 27 for security reasons. The opposition though claims that it is just a ploy to give the government more time to intimidate the opposition.
Tsvangirai has called on the 15-nation Southern African Development Community to send election monitors for the June 27 vote. Mugabe's government though resisted calls for international vote monitors for the first round.
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