Sunday, June 22, 2008
No excuses now...
Morgan Tsvangirai pulls out of Zimbabwe's so-called run-off election, saying he couldn't ask his supporters to risk their lives by voting for him. His quote:
Mugabe is placing a very simple bet. He is betting that nowhere in the UN or the African Union is there enough of a commitment to democracy, human rights, or anything decent that would compel them to do the hard work necessary to drive Mugabe from power. Thabo Mbeki doesn't want to get involved, and at the UN, China and Russia will claim that doing anything would violate Zimbabwe's "sovreignty."
If anyone wanted to prove him wrong, now would be the time. Personally, I think this is the sort of thing that calls for Stone Cold John Bolton, but the multinationalists are convinced that quiet, less confrontational diplomacy is the way to go.
Fine. Mugabe needs to go. Prove it.
"We can't ask the people to cast their vote on June 27 when that vote will cost their lives. We will no longer participate in this violent sham of an election," Tsvangirai said.For weeks now, Robert Mugabe has been telling anyone who would listen that there would be no real election, in the sense of actually letting the people make a decision and then abiding by that decision. Generally speaking, the world has put a lot on this election. Not on Mugabe actually losing and stepping down, which would give Zimbabwe the only chance it has to recover as a nation, but on the fraud and intimidation being minimal and deniable enough to allow the U.N. and Zimbabwe's neighbors to throw up their hands, say "we tried," and pretend the hell that Zimbabwe has become is somebody else's fault, preferably somebody Western.
Mugabe is placing a very simple bet. He is betting that nowhere in the UN or the African Union is there enough of a commitment to democracy, human rights, or anything decent that would compel them to do the hard work necessary to drive Mugabe from power. Thabo Mbeki doesn't want to get involved, and at the UN, China and Russia will claim that doing anything would violate Zimbabwe's "sovreignty."
If anyone wanted to prove him wrong, now would be the time. Personally, I think this is the sort of thing that calls for Stone Cold John Bolton, but the multinationalists are convinced that quiet, less confrontational diplomacy is the way to go.
Fine. Mugabe needs to go. Prove it.
