Firs things first…. Morgan Tsvangirai, the beleaguered opposition leader, HAS PULLED OUT of the presidential runoff vote in Zimbabwe… in turn, on Wednesday, he called on the United Nations to send a peacekeeping force to oversee new election. He said, “Zimbabwe will break if the world does not come to our aid.” Tsvangirai withdrew from the runoff against President Robert Mugabe planned for Friday because of all the weeks of political attacks and killings.
Tsvangirai’s call for a UN force coincided with a scramble of regional and international diplomacy with many African and Western institutions saying that the vote Friday would be neither free nor fair.
A key group of southern African countries had scheduled a meeting Wednesday in Swaziland to seek a regional way out of the crisis. President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, however, was not scheduled to attend, officials said.
We ask for the UN to go further than its recent resolution, condemning the violence in Zimbabwe, to encompass an active isolation of the dictator Mugabe,” Tsvangirai wrote.
He added: “For this we need a force to protect the people. We do not want armed conflict, but the people of Zimbabwe need the words of indignation from global leaders to be backed by the moral rectitude of military force. Such a force would be in the role of peacekeepers, not troublemakers. They would separate the people from their oppressors and cast the protective shield around the democratic process for which Zimbabwe yearns.”
Tsvangirai continued: “The next stage should be a new presidential election. This does indeed burden Zimbabwe and create an atmosphere of limbo. Yet there is hardly a scenario that does not carry an element of pain. The reality is that a new election, devoid of violence and intimidation, is the only way to put Zimbabwe right.”
In New York, the Zimbabwean ambassador to the UN said that a conspiracy led by the United States and Britain had fooled the UN Security Council into concluding that the violence gripping his nation has made it impossible to hold a fair presidential election.
Boniface Chidyausiku, the ambassador, said: “We see the international community, the Security Council, has been duped into believing that there is lawlessness in Zimbabwe and the opposition cannot campaign, which is not true.”
Chidyausiku added that his government could still fairly re-elect Mugabe on Friday even though Tsvangirai dropped from the race.
Everything I have talked about here is directly related to the United States and Foreign Policy. Zimbabwe is basically stuck right now between a leader who wants to retain his power with violence and a Democratic movement leader who is begging for a fair election. This country is calling out for help from with US and the UN but it’s hard for them to give aid to the Zimbabwean people because they believe the civil violence will continue and there is no one to enforce the laws in Zimbabwe. The fact that Tsvangirai dropped out of the race this week is a real step backwards for Zimbabwe and I do not foresee a fair election being able to happen at this point with or without aid from the UN and US.
