Zimbabwe crisis worsens

Recounts confirm that Mugabe's party lost the election:

Zimbabwe's electoral commission said Saturday that a recount of votes for 10 parliamentary seats confirmed the original results, including opposition victories, making it unlikely that the ruling party can wrest control of parliament.

But it looks unlikely Mugabe will go peacefully

Zimbabwean army and police raided the headquarters of the main opposition party in the capital, Harare, yesterday and arrested more than 100 people, some of whom had taken shelter in the building after falling victim to purported government-sponsored violence . . .
One of the arrested activists who managed to escape from police custody said the security officers took away at least 120 people in police and army vehicles.
He spoke last night to The Washington Times but asked not to be identified for fear the army would carry out reprisals against his family.
"At around 10 a.m. ... dozens of police and army trucks pulled up outside the MDC headquarters at Harvest House in Harare. They swarmed into the building, assaulting and handcuffing people as they went," he said.

If Jimmy Carter really wants to do something for peace and democracy, why doesn't he stop fooling around with Hamas and go do something about Zimbabwe?

More bad news from Zimbabwe

Of course, it's never good news, it it?

ZANU PF is planning a countrywide witch-hunt of party members suspected of sabotaging President Robert Mugabe's bid to win a sixth term of office.
Party sources say the plan was hatched last week as it emerged Mugabe intended to cling to power, even after failing a first-round knockout with his long-time nemesis, MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai.
The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC), is yet to announce the presidential poll results, but it is being publicly acknowledged that Mugabe lost. . . .
The sources said Mugabe, disillusioned with his Zanu PF heavyweight colleagues, wanted war veterans and Zanu PF youths to play a central role in "mobilising" the rural folk to come out in large numbers to vote for him.

Oh, the "war veterans" again. If you've followed the Mugabe-induced nightmare in Zimbabwe, you know that the decisive moment in the spiralling decline was when Mugabe sent "war veterans" to seize the farms of white landowners. (The war ended more than 20 years earlier, but many of the "war veterans" weren't even 30 years old. They're just Zanu-PF enforcers whom Mugabe calls "war veterans" to cloak their thuggery in nationalism.)

Meanwhile, Mugabe's arresting election workers:

Zimbabwean police have arrested at least five officials for allegedly under-counting votes cast for President Robert Mugabe in last month's election.
Police said the election officials have been charged with fraud and criminal abuse of duty, accused of taking nearly 5,000 votes away from Mr Mugabe.

Ed Morrisey notes Mugabe's Gore-like tactics.

Mugabe’s Zanu-PF has now demanded a recount. That seems odd, since the election commission hasn’t released results yet. How can they know they need a recount if the votes have not yet been counted fully the first time? They’re stalling for time — time enough to figure out how to steal an election they obviously lost too badly to spin.

This is an ominous situation. Zimbabwe will be lucky if this mess doesn't end in a civil war and/or a Cambodia-style genocide.

Pray for Zimbabwe

Robert Mugabe has violated property rights, trashed the rule of law, destroyed civil society and wrecked the economy in Zimbabwe. Now he declares war on the people:

The ebbing regime of Robert Mugabe began its fightback in earnest last night, launching raids against opposition offices and foreign journalists in what many feared was the start of a campaign of intimidation.
Paramilitary police raided opposition offices at a hotel in central Harare, ransacking rooms as riot police moved in to arrest foreign journalists at a guest house in the capital. George Sibotshiwe, spokesman of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), said that the party’s headquarters in the centre of Harare and offices in Meikles hotel in the capital had been raided. “They took nothing. They simply ransacked the place,” he said.
As many as four journalists were arrested, including a reporter from the New York Times, in a separate raid on Harare’s York Lodge hotel, where many correspondents were staying.

Naturally, the Mugabe regime wants to eliminate foreign witnesses to the anti-democratic bloodbath that's in store:

Leaders of the Movement for Democratic Change said the raids heralded a campaign of political repression to safeguard President Robert Mugabe, one of Africa’s longest-serving leaders. His party, known as ZANU-PF, has already lost control of the lower house of Parliament, according to official results from Saturday’s elections, a huge turnabout in a nation where Mr. Mugabe has long controlled virtually all levers of power.
But the government has still not released a tally of the presidential race, prompting international criticism of the delay and concern that attempts were under way to manipulate the count. The government has said the count has been slow because the election was the first one for all national offices at once.
The opposition says that tallies posted at each polling place show that its candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, won 50.3 percent of the vote, barely enough to gain the majority needed to avert a runoff election against Mr. Mugabe.

Mugabe wants immunity from prosecution. Ed Morrisey says:

Clearly, Mugabe has no intention of putting himself in jeopardy of prosecution -- a tacit admission of his crimes as de facto dictator of Zimbabwe. After 28 year of disastrous rule as Prime Minister and then President, Mugabe has destroyed the national economy, rigged elections, abused his power to maintain his regime, and perhaps committed even worse crimes about which only his victims know.

The damage Mugabe has done to his nation's economy may be irreparable. By persecuting white farmers and forcing them off their farms, he turned Zimbabwe from the breadbasket of Africa into a basket case. Now, he is fighting to escape justice -- at the hands of his fellow Zimbabweans who've seen through his demagoguery.

In contemplating Mugabe's career, one is reminded of Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom and its chapter entitled "Why The Worst Get On Top."

Worst president ever?

No, not Jimmy Carter. I didn't say "worst American president ever." Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe might well be the worst president in world history. Mugabe turned one of Africa's richest nations into an economic basket case, and now it appears he's been overwhelmingly defeated for re-election:

Zimbabwe’s main opposition party has claimed an overwhelming victory in the country’s general election, prompting a warning from President Robert Mugabe’s camp that the early declaration amounted to an attempted coup.

(Hat-tip: Hot Air.) Kind of sounds like Al Gore's people bitching about butterfly ballots in Palm Beach, or John Kerry's supporters whining about "disenfranchisement" in Ohio, doesn't it?

Unfortunately, Mugabe's thugs are a bit more dangerous than idiotic "progressive" ranters on the blogosphere. Getting rid of Mugabe could take a civil war:

To Robert Mugabe, today's presidential election in Zimbabwe is not so much a vote as war. From his campaign slogan - Get Behind the Fist, over a picture of Mugabe waving a firmly clenched fist - to speeches invoking the liberation war against white rule, the president of Zimbabwe has defined his campaign to extend his 28-year rule as the final struggle against British imperialism and its fifth columnists in the opposition.
"We must deliver the final blow against the British on March 29," he told one of his final election rallies. "We are in a war situation. This is a time to fight, not pleasure."

Mugabe's vicious demagoguery against whites -- and his economically disastrous practice of "expropriating" farms owned by whites -- is no different than how Hitler demonized Jews. It's a classic blueprint for despotism:

• Name a class of scapegoats. Ideally, the scapegoats should be a small and unpopular minority.
• Blame the scapegoats for all society's ills.
• Claim that the scapegoats are so evil that extreme measures are justified to defeat the scapegoat's nefarious schemes.
• Defame anyone who criticizes the anti-scapegoat measures as being "pro-scapegoat."

Condoleezza Rice just denounced Mugabe as a "disgrace" :

"We've made very clear our concerns about how this election might be conducted, given the very bad record of Mugabe concerning his people, the opposition and the region," Rice told reporters after meeting with Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

"We've tried to make a case ... that there needed to be free and fair elections in Zimbabwe as much as it was possible. It's difficult since really no international observation was allowed," the top U.S. diplomat said.

"But really, the Mugabe regime is a disgrace to the people of Zimbabwe and a disgrace to southern Africa and to the continent of Africa as whole," she said.

Pray that Mugabe exits peacefully. A civil war in Zimbabwe could be a bloodbath of such monstrous proportions as to make people forget Darfur and Rwanda.

UPDATE: Democrat=Socialist reminds us that Mugabe is good buddies with Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and says:

Who can blame the guy for fighting tooth and nail to hang on to his presidential palace, limo’s and pimped out suits?

(Photo via Dr. Flap.)