Afrobarometer: Mugabe Engineered his Own Reelection, Afrobarometer Senior Adviser Writes
Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe put in place government and legal structures that may assure voters return his Zanu-PF party to national office, Afrobarometer's senior adviser, Michael Bratton writes in an article published in Foreign Affairs magazine.
The party appears "to have invested heavily in measures to manipulate the electoral machinery," according to Bratton, university distinguished professor of political science and African studies at Michigan State University.
The article details how the president used his power and party loyalists to bolster his power. For example, Mugabe called an election by decree once the Zimbabwe Supreme Court determined that it had to be done by July 31 -- short-circuiting a Parliamentary debate over a new election law that would allow the polls to be delayed. Early elections are disadvantageous to the opposition MDC party, which was slow to recover from 2008 election violence, when 200 of its members were killed.
"Mugabe and ZANU-PF seem to recognize that an open replay of 2008’s electoral brutality will only undermine the validity of their rule," says the article, 'Zimbabwe's Underhanded Autocrat'. "Therefore, they now rhetorically proclaim peace while reaping the harvest of fear that they planted during earlier periods of intimidation."
As the world awaits the vote count in Zimbabwe, Michael Bratton is available for interview.
Professor Bratton's article: http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/139611/michael-bratton/zimbabwes-underhanded-autocrat?page=show
by Afrobarometer
Afrobarometer is an African led, independent, non-partisan research project founded in 1999 to measure the social, political and economic atmosphere on the continent. Its goals are to collect top quality data on public attitudes, and to use them to give voice to ordinary Africans in political and policy debates, both in their own countries, and around the region, and the world. The Afrobarometer is currently completing its 5th Round of surveys in 35 countries. Led by Core Partners in South Africa, Benin, Ghana and Kenya, it has grown to become the largest, most credible public opinion poll on the continent. Core financing comes from the Department for International Development (DfID) in the United Kingdom, the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA), and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)].
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