Zimbabwe set for run-off presidential election

As a result of the March vote outcome in Zimbabwe, the incumbent, President Robert Mugabe, and the leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC-T), Morgan Tsvangirai, face each other in a June 27 run-off election. According to the official results, the main opposition party had won approximately 47.9 percent of the vote in March, while the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) won over 41 percent.

The Zimbabwe Constitution mandates that if any candidate cannot gather more than 51 percent of the presidential vote, then a run-off election is required. Yet when listening to the Western news reports on Zimbabwe, if one did not know better, they would believe that there is no constitution or law and order prevailing inside the country.

It is remarkable that the ruling party has maintained control and stability during this recent period. Very few other countries have in recent history been subjected to such an intense psychological warfare campaign.

Keeping the recent Iraq experience in mind, any objective observer of the Zimbabwe situation would judge that the former colonial power of Britain and their allies in the United States and Western Europe hold as their ultimate aim the violent regime change from the revolutionary ZANU-PF government to one based on neocolonialism.

With an economy severely affected by sanctions imposed by the U.K., the U.S. and the European Union, in conjunction with the well-financed and coordinated media campaign directed against the existing government in Zimbabwe, the overall image of this independent country remains negative in the minds of millions within the Western world.

Yet despite these media attacks and attempts aimed at the total diplomatic isolation of the ZANU-PF government and its President Robert Mugabe, the country has been able to maintain its national security and to continue with the political processes as required by its constitution.

As a sovereign member nation of the United Nations and the African Union, Zimbabwe has the perfect right to attend an international conference sponsored by a U.N. agency to discuss an issue that is so critical to its national development.

In fact the current crisis in food production, which in part is caused by the rapid increase in the price of oil, has sparked considerable unrest throughout Africa, the Caribbean, and as of late, Western Europe. The world economic downturn grows out of the crisis in overproduction and the superexploitation of labor and resources of the peoples of the so-called developing countries.

Even if Zimbabwe had not taken such a serious and consistent position against imperialist interference in its internal affairs, the country would still be facing an economic crisis along with other nations throughout the continent and within the Third World countries of Latin America and Asia.

Even the neighboring economic powerhouse, the Republic of South Africa, has experienced a growing energy crisis and a rapid rise in food and fuel prices.

In Zimbabwe’s case, however, the Western media and Western diplomats unfairly blame the current government in Harare for every economic problem inside the country. This biased view of Zimbabwe’s economic problems is totally based on the subjective views towards this country, which defied Western interests by engaging in a massive land redistribution program unprecedented in the region. African nations that take control of their land and resources risk forever suffering the scorn of the imperialist states and their collaborators.

According to a June 2 BBC report, an Australian diplomat called the presence of an African head of state [Mugabe] at the FAO conference in Rome “obscene.” It is almost absurd that someone representing the settler-colonial regime of Australia, which killed in large numbers the Indigenous Black people of that continent, would have the political audacity to attack a leader of one of the most widely known and successful struggles for national independence.

When these types of attacks are made against African leaders, it becomes quite obvious that the real underlying objective of the criticisms leveled against Zimbabwe derive from the desire to reverse the historical process of political and economic independence and to place a government in power in Harare that will carry out the foreign policy objectives of the Western states.

Western press agencies, through their slanted reporting, have also attacked Zimbabwe’s requirement that all nongovernmental relief agencies operating in the country reregister with the state. What country anywhere in the world allows foreign-based organizations, some of whom intervene in Zimbabwean politics, to act with impunity on their soil?

Reports have surfaced of the failure of Zimbabwe’s government to honor the diplomatic status of U.S. Ambassador James McGee. Former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operatives such as John Stockwell, author of “In Search of Enemies,” have revealed in their books that diplomatic missions were often used as a base for covert operations aimed at regime change.

Zimbabwe’s government should be concerned about the activities of diplomats operating within their country whose home countries have imposed sanctions and taken an extremely hostile posture towards Zimbabwe’s leaders.

Those seeking to uphold the right of oppressed and formerly oppressed nations to self-determination, independent nationhood and sovereignty, must respect the inherent desire on the part of the Zimbabwe people to conduct their elections under the guidance of the laws of the state.

The U.S. government refused any diplomatic interference, even from countries considered allies, when the U.S. disqualified hundreds of thousands of African Americans from voting in Florida in 2000 and in Ohio in 2004.

In 2005, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when hundreds of thousands of mostly African-American people were forcefully evacuated from the U.S. Gulf region, the Bush administration denied offers from Cuba, Venezuela and other countries to provide direct assistance to the evacuees.

In Zimbabwe’s case, where the anti-government propaganda is so intense in Western circles, those who seek to uphold in principle the right to self-determination can only support the ruling party’s ability to defend the sovereignty and independence of that nation.