WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2008-05-08 Time: 00:00:00 Posted By: Jan
President Robert Mugabe could rule Zimbabwe for another year, going by utterances of the country’s electoral chief and a new round of court challenges to the March 29 election results.
In Pretoria, ambassador Kingsley Mamabolo, head of the SA observer mission, claimed the failure of the Movement for Democratic Change to supply its collations of results in Harare wards had prompted the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) to release its own tallies as the final result.
This allowed Mugabe to remain in power, as no presidential candidate won more than the required 50 percent of the vote.
The MDC’s blunder was made during the verifications of last month’s re-count, which Mamabolo and others of the Southern African Development Community observer mission, headed by Angola, witnessed. Critics have rejected the re-counts as fatally flawed because the ballots were removed from ZEC premises and were with Zimbabwe’s armed forces for some time.
While the re-count had not altered the original outcomes of the parliamentary poll, giving the opposition a majority for the first time in 28 years, discrepancies in a small number of wards might have had a significant effect on the presidential result.
The ZEC announced that Mugabe won about 43 percent and the MDC’s Morgan Tsvangirai just under 48 percent. The MDC claims this robbed Tsvangirai of an outright win.
Independent researchers working for the Idasa think-tank in Pretoria calculated that a “swing vote” would number in the lower tens of thousands. Their projections showed Tsvangirai won either just over 50 percent or just over 48 percent, depending on the scenario.
Critics say fiddling with ballots, such as those in Harare wards the MDC was unable to corroborate, could have made the difference.
On Wednesday, a Pan-African Parliament (PAP) observer mission said in Midrand that the SADC observer mission failed to comply with the regional bloc’s election principles, and those of the AU.
Marwick Khumalo of Swaziland, who led the mission, said ZEC head George Chiweshwe had assured him a runoff “would not extend beyond the next 12 months” – inducing laughter from the PAP assembly.
Mamabolo said discrepancies revealed by the re-count were minute, vindicating the SADC mission’s appraisal of the ZEC’s professionalism and meticulousness.
He pointed out that the Zimbabwean constitution demanded that a runoff election be held within 21 days after results were announced. But it also allowed postponement of a runoff due to conditions on the ground, such as a lack of resources. His understanding of the constitution was that Mugabe would be the caretaker ruler of Zimbabwe during this time.
Source: http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?art_id=vn20080508054342688C109718