Zimbabwe Opposition Leader Pulls Out of Runoff

At a news conference in Harare on Sunday, Morgan Tsvangirai said he would not ask his party’s supporters to go to the polls “when that vote will cost them their lives.” (Alexander Joe/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images)

JOHANNESBURG, June 23rd. (NY Times) — Only five days before Zimbabwe's presidential runoff election, the opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai announced Sunday that he was pulling out of the race because armed forces backing President Robert Mugabe have made it clear that anyone who votes for Mr. Tsvangirai faces a real possibility of being killed. At a news conference, Mr. Tsvangirai, who leads the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, or M.D.C., said he was unwilling to ask the party’s supporters to go to the polls on Friday “when that vote will cost them their lives.” Mr. Tsvangirai’s decision came on a day when governing party youth militia armed with iron bars, sticks and other weapons beat his supporters as they sought to attend a rally for him in Harare. It was the latest incident in a tumultuous campaign season in which Mr. Tsvangirai has been repeatedly detained, his party’s chief strategist has been jailed on treason charges most observers believe are trumped up, and rampant state-sponsored violence has left at least 86 dead and thousands injured, according to tallies by doctors treating the victims.

Over the past week, a growing chorus of leaders in Africa and abroad have declared unequivocally that a free and fair election is now impossible in Zimbabwe. There are growing cracks in the longtime solidarity of African leaders with Mr. Mugabe, a liberation hero whose defiant anti-western rhetoric for years struck a chord in the region, but it remains to be seen whether Zimbabwe’s neighbors will censure Mr. Mugabe or take even tougher steps, such as economic sanctions, to isolate his regime. They have never done so before despite elections in 2002 and 2005 that were widely believed to have been marked by rigging and fraud, but that his peers in southern Africa declared legitimate.

The United States and Britain are pressing to have Zimbabwe’s political crisis debated on Monday in the UN Security Council, a step South Africa, the southern African region’s most powerful nation, has consistently opposed. But Mr. Mugabe, in power for 28 years, has made it difficult for his fellow African heads of state to pretend there is anything normal about this election. He has repeated declared at public rallies in recent days that he would never allow Mr. Tsvangirai, whom he denounces as a pawn of Britain, the former colonial power in Zimbabwe, to become president through the ballot box, vowing that the bullet is mightier than the ballpoint pen. “Only God who appointed me will remove me — not the M.D.C., not the British,” Mr. Mugabe vowed in the city of Bulawayo on Friday. “Only God will remove me!”

Mr. Tsvangirai beat Mr. Mugabe in the March general election by 48 percent to 43 percent, even by the government’s own official count. The opposition claimed it won outright and that no runoff was needed. The Movement for Democratic Change has a history of agonizing about whether to participate in elections it believes will be fundamentally unfair, and there have long been deep divisions within the party about how to proceed. This year, Mr. Tsvangirai reluctantly entered the race, though he argued that the regional mediator, President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, had failed to ensure conditions for a fair contest. Mr. Tsvangirai said earlier this year that at least the election would reveal the ugly face of Mr. Mugabe’s despotic reign. Again, the opposition vacillated about whether to participate in the runoff, but finally decided to do so. In a decision that will certainly provoke a range of feelings in his supporters, many of whom have paid a terrible price for backing his candidacy, Mr. Tsvangirai apparently reached a point where the levels of violence were more than he was willing to see inflicted on his supporters. It is also possible that he and his advisers concluded the systematic campaign to displace thousands of the opposition’s polling agents and intimidate its supporters had succeeded in making victory virtually impossible.

Mr. Tsvangirai, a charismatic former trade union leader who has been Mr. Mugabe’s hated rival for almost a decade, charged on Sunday that Mr. Mugabe’s violent, retributive strategy had displaced 200,000 people, destroyed 20,000 homes and injured and maimed over 10,000 people in what he called in a statement “this orgy of violence.” The opposition party also issued a statement alleging that the high profile show of soldiers and police on Sunday showed, “Zimbabwe clearly is under military rule.” It described military helicopters flying over Harare and Bulawayo, the country’s largest cities, police officers in riot gear manning the grounds where Mr. Tsvangirai’s rally was supposed to have taken place, and ruling party youth militia stoning cars in Harare’s suburbs. Mr. Tsvangirai’s decision to leave the race with only days to the finish line ends an election year that seemed after the March general election to offer Zimbabwe its first real hope of change since Mr. Mugabe rose to power in 1980. For a moment, Mr. Mugabe considered relinquishing power, governing party insiders said. But by April, Mr. Mugabe and a clique of military, police and intelligence officials — the so-called “securocrats” — had decided to carry out a violent strategy to hang onto power.
By Celia W. Dugger & Barry Bearak
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