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Elections In Zimbabwe: Mugabe Should Have Learnt From The Professionals

May 2, 2008

Finally, after more than a month of counting and recounting, the results of the presidential election in Zimbabwe are now known. Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has received 47 per cent of the vote and president Robert Mugabe 43 per cent. We are now told that as none of the candidates have managed to cross the 50 per cent barrier a second round of voting is going to take place.

The problem is, of course, that if these figures were correct they would have been released a long time ago because they would have allowed Mr Mugabe to demand a second round of elections anyway. But now, after weeks of delays, nobody is going to treat these results seriously. And I suspect that even Mugabe’s closest allies are now wondering how on earth they could have messed up a perfectly simple thing like holding an election with a predetermined outcome built into it.

If you ask me, a former election advisor, I think that Robert Mugabe has made a crucial mistake of failing to consult the best people in the business before he ran for another term as president. There are wonderful examples of a serious approach to voting in countries like North Korea, Cuba, Belarus and, of course, Russia. I would even say that Russia is probably much more impressive than the others because it is the only country in the world where voters seem perfectly happy to elect people as their heads of state who are totally unknown to them and who don’t even bother to reveal their political platforms and economic programmes. Both Vladimir Putin, the outgoing president, and Dmitry Medvedev, the incoming president, have been initially plucked from obscurity, refused to reveal their election manifestos and turned down offers to take part in TV debates with their opponents. And yet, both of them miraculously have managed to receive enough votes in the first round of elections to guarantee them victory without the need for a run off. Mr Mugabe should have simply sent his people to Russia, where they would have learnt how to conduct an election and win it conclusively, and things now would have been going swimmingly for him.

Another option for Mr Mugabe would have been to hire former British Prime Minister Tony Blair as his election advisor. Mr Blair, in my opinion, performed a miracle in 2005 when he won the general election which, by all standards, he should have lost. Hardly anyone in the country at the time could stand the sight of Blair and yet he pulled in a healthy percentage of the votes and even managed to get a 66 – rather a telling figure I should say – majority in the House of Commons. Mr Mugabe could have learned a thing or two from Mr Blair about creative fund raising and about introducing postal voting that opens up so many opportunities for political parties that have a problem with convincing the electorate to vote for them.

Instead Mr Mugabe created a serious problem for himself and now he has to send his men to terrorise the opposition and the voters, and that doesn’t look good at all. Putin and Blair would have never have sunk so low. They are slick operators and get things done brilliantly. Both have an ability to put a good spin on any piece of bad news and convince people and the whole world that things are going splendidly in their respective countries, that the economy is booming, that crime is falling, that education is getting better and that generally most people are feeling good about themselves. And even though things are not exactly as they say they are, people still seem to vote for them in large numbers.

That is how elections are won, Mr Mugabe. Learn from the professionals.

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