ZIMBABWE:Zimbabwe's ruling party is now divided between hardliners and pragmatists, writes Alec Russell
THESE ARE testing times for stalwarts of Zimbabwe's ruling Zanu-PF party as they try to safeguard their future.
For four febrile weeks, as the authorities have delayed the release of the March 29th election results, there have been mounting suspicions at home and abroad that president Robert Mugabe was trying to fix the figures to ensure he stayed in power.
Yet as results have at last started to trickle out, it has become clear that the regime lacked either the will or the means to overturn evidence that Mugabe and Zanu-PF were defeated by Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
First came last weekend's admission by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission that a partial recount of the vote, far from tipping the parliamentary results in Zanu-PF's favour, as government critics predicted, merely confirmed victory for the MDC.
Then leaked presidential figures suggested Mugabe came in second place, with 43 per cent, behind Tsvangirai on 47 per cent.
"People in Zanu-PF are very much affected by the uncertainty," said Ishmael Dube, a former high-ranking diplomat.
"Many are hoping we have a government of national unity. But then there are also deep divisions. There are those radicals who do not want to work with the opposition and the reasonable ones who believe there is no alternative."
After a month of incubation, any results from the electoral commission or the government have to be regarded with scepticism, analysts caution. Diplomats note that, conveniently for the regime, Tsvangirai's figure was at the lowest end of a projection by independent monitors; Mugabe's was at the highest end of his projected figure. The MDC has rejected the leaked figures as fraudulent, insisting its leader won an outright victory and suggesting the leak was designed to prepare the ground for a run-off.
But it is still striking that the presidential figures leaked by government concede that, for the first time in his 28 years in power, Mugabe suffered an electoral defeat. "Probably they did want to do a bit of rigging but then found it harder than they hoped," said one regional diplomat.
"The motives for having a recount and delaying the release were wholly impure but the result is clearly less corrupted than they would have wanted."
Wilfred Mhanda, a veteran of the independence war who has broken with Mugabe but retains close contacts with party insiders, said most party officials had over the past month been paralysed by uncertainty.
"They are in a quandary. They have no game plan. The plan was to buy time to come up with a real plan, and they haven't. The hardliners are going down the fatalistic route and refusing to compromise, but others are saying, 'we have to do a deal with the MDC'."
Mhanda believes that the authorities found it far harder than they expected to induce electoral officials to endorse a fraudulent result. His assessment chimes with comments by Zanu-PF insiders who say, despite public bravado, the party's authority is not what it once was.
The government's fall-back strategy appears to be a run-off.
State-backed militias have conducted a ruthless campaign of intimidation against MDC activists in the past month, in particular in the rural areas where it made headway in Mugabe's traditional strongholds. The MDC said yesterday 20 of its supporters had been killed since the election.
In the closest indication yet of official thinking, Bright Matonga, deputy information minister, said yesterday the ruling party's figures indicated a second round would be necessary.
Calls for a run-off would pose a dilemma for the MDC. If it competes, it faces a possible fresh wave of intimidation. But unless regional leaders back its view that a second round is unjust, to decline to compete would hand victory to Mugabe.
Equally, many in Zanu-PF are aware that contesting a second round after conceding a first-round defeat is not what they originally had in mind.
"At the end of five weeks they have bought a bit of time," said one western diplomat. "But for what? What have they achieved?"