Safeguarding Democracy?

[Juvenal]

I came across this on the BBC website on Friday.

It is a report about the Zimbabwe police raid on the MDC headquarters in Harare (that's Fort Salisbury for you imperialists out there).

This consisted of arresting everyone in the building and taking all the computers and documents away.

Police are reported to have said that

the aim of the raid was to find those responsible for arson attacks east of Harare.

However...

ZESN (the election monitoring agency) chairman Noel Kututwa told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme that the police had a search warrant to look for "subversive information likely to overthrow a constitutionally elected government".

I almost fell off my chair when I realised that the "subversive information" could be none other than the MDC records of the voting results!

The rest of Mugabe's campaign strategy seems to consist of using thugs to "persuade" people that voting Mugabe in the forthcoming presidential election run-off will be good for their health, and blaming white farmers and colonialists (Britain) for all Zimbabwe's ills.

So the question is, should we really be getting upset by all this?

Are we really committed to world democracy? After all many of our friends are possibly less democratic than Robert Mugabe (such as Saudi Arabia and China), and some of our enemies may be more democratic (such as Ugo Chavez).

So, what do you think?

[Nick_Since_1985]

Rhodesia can piss off for all I care. If they want freedom then Rhodesians will have to fight for it, otherwise they should yust accept their fate. Why does every piss country in the world think we would stand up for them, it's their country, it's their problem, it's their fight...

[Каие]

Rhodesia Zimbabwe can piss off for all I care. If they want freedom then Rhodesians Zimbabweans will have to fight for it, otherwise they should yust accept their fate. Why does every piss country in the world think we would stand up for them, it's their country, it's their problem, it's their fight...

Problem is that if they stand up for it, they will be seen as terrorists and will reck their country in the process.

[Nick_Since_1985]

Problem is that if they stand up for it, they will be seen as terrorists and will reck their country in the process.

No they will be freedom fighters supported by the west...

[Pontifex Maximus]

I can't believe you're this shocked about skewed voting/corruption in Zimbabwe.

[Juvenal]

I can't believe you're this shocked about skewed voting/corruption in Zimbabwe.

I am not shocked by corruption and lies, but I am slightly taken-aback by the sheer blatancy of the lies. Foreign apologists for the Mugabe regime are expected to publically endorse this stuff, and yet Mugabe has not bothered to put any significant effort into making it convincing.

The awkward position for apologists is further enhanced by this government newspaper summing up of the Chinese arms shipment affair...

Meanwhile, the Herald newspaper has condemned Zimbabwe's neighbours as "myopic stooges" for refusing to let a cargo of Chinese weapons cross their territory to landlocked Zimbabwe.

"Zimbabwe is... under attack from the former coloniser and its allies. As such, Zimbabwe probably needs to arm itself more than any other country in Africa today for the simple reason that it has been targeted for destabilisation by the traditional Western rabble rousers," the Herald said.

[Nick_Since_1985]

I can't believe you're slightly taken-aback by the sheer blatancy of the lies in Zimbabwe...

[Yorkshireman]

I don't suppose they're much different from many other African nations or other similar regimes around the world. I think everyone expected this from Mugabe and I don't really think there is much the world can do about it.

[Richard]

Oh, Robert, you've gotten your country into *such* a pickle. On the bright side, he's lived about twice as long as the average Zimbabwean so he must be due to die soon. He's like, the equivalent of someone living to 160 in Western years.

[Sidmen]

He's like, the equivalent of someone living to 160 in Western years.

Western years, like dog years right?