Honest Voting

Zimbabwean election officials say results from the country’s troubled runoff elections on Friday will be delayed — officials now hope to announce the winner on Sunday, according to the BBC. Mugabe was the only official candidate in Friday’s run-off vote, and unsurprisingly, he is expected to be announced as the winner.

Lance Guma, in an SW Radio Africa report in AllAfrica.com, writes: “As results trickled in from some of the polling stations a clear picture is emerging of many people spoiling their ballot papers in protest. A polling station in Highfields recorded 266 votes for Mugabe, 184 for Tsvangirai while 150 votes were spoiled. The pattern repeated itself countrywide especially in opposition strongholds.”

Preparations for Mugabe’s swearing-in ceremony on Sunday are reportedly already underway.

Zimbabwe’s opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai says he will push for negotiations with President Robert Mugabe on a new constitution and fresh elections. Tsvangirai intimated that Mugabe could remain as a ceremonial head of state. He said his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party would use its parliamentary majority, which it won in elections in March, to force negotiations over a transitional arrangement.

Parenthetically, there’s an interesting op-ed in the June 2008 New African, written by its editor, Baffour Ankomah. I’m sorry the entire article isn’t available on line. Ankomah wonders what many non-Westerners must wonder when they read only curtailed, sensationalized coverage of their region, much less their country. International election coverage is no exception:

Why was the Western media so interested in the Zimbabwean elections but just gave a passing glance to both the Nigerian and Sierra Leonean elections held last year? More so when 200 people died in pre- and post-election violence in Nigeria?

That’s something to think about, isn’t it. Why focus on a few countries above others? Unfortunately the first question needs to be “Whose national and economic interests are being served by this coverage?”

Ankomah says it more bleakly, as someone who has rolled these thoughts around in his head for years and come to no good conclusion:

But throughout the printing age or since the beginning of newspapers in Europe, the Western media has always been true to its core beliefs – follow the flag or government lead in foreign policy matters; objectivity and balance end where national interest begins; ideological leaning determines the size and play of domestic reporting; advertisers (and to some extent, readers) pull the strings from behind the scenes; historical baggage, political and economic interests determine the reporting of Africa and other foreign lands, etc, etc.

Wish I could argue with him.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS