http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/04/world/africa/04zimbabwe.html?hp

New Signs of Mugabe Crackdown in Zimbabwe
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By GRAHAM BOWLEY
Published: April 4, 2008

Police officers loyal to Robert G. Mugabe, the embattled president of
Zimbabwe, struck back at the emboldened opposition on Thursday,
raiding its offices and arresting at least two foreign journalists
covering the disputed presidential election.

The raid on the offices of the opposition, the Movement for Democratic
Change, reported by an Associated Press correspondent in Harare, the
capital, was viewed as an ominous portent of a possible crackdown by
Mr. Mugabe to preserve his 28-year-old hold on power.

One of the arrested journalists was Barry Bearak, a correspondent for
The New York Times, who was taken from his hotel to HarareÂ’s central
police station, the newspaper said in a statement issued by Bill
Keller, the executive editor.

“He was apparently one of a number of Americans and other foreign
nationals rounded up today,” Mr. Keller said. “An American consular
official who visited him at the central police station reported that
he was being held for ‘violation of the journalism laws.’ We are
making every effort to assure that he is well treated, and to secure
his prompt release.” American officials in Washington said that they
were trying to determine if any Americans other than Mr. Bearak had
been arrested. No other detainees were publicly identified.

The Zimbabwe election commission has released no vote tallies in the
presidential vote last Saturday, while the opposition candidate,
Morgan Tsvangirai, asserted on Wednesday that he had won a 50.3
percent majority and that Mr. Mugabe should concede.

After days of public reticence about Mr. MugabeÂ’s intentions in the
wake of the elections, Bright Matonga, a deputy information minister
for Mr. Mugabe, indicated that the president was not prepared to step
aside and would compete in a second round of voting if results showed
that neither candidate had won a majority in the first round.

The Zimbabwe election commission has confirmed that Mr. Mugabe and his
party, known as ZANU-PF, lost control of Parliament — a huge setback
in a nation where Mr. Mugabe has long dominated.

Zimbabweans have been waiting to see if the official count matches the
oppositionÂ’s, knowing it would not require a very heavy thumb on the
scale to force another round of voting three weeks from now.

Up until Thursday, there had been signs that Mr. Mugabe would endorse
a second vote, which, while not as humiliating as an outright defeat,
would still seem a difficult pill for a man who has held power for so
long and considers himself the father of the nation. Wednesday
morningÂ’s edition of The Herald, the state-run newspaper, reported
that “the pattern of results” shows that no candidates “will garner
more than 50 percent of the vote, forcing a rerun.”

A businessman with close connections to the party hierarchy, speaking
on the condition of anonymity, said Mr. Mugabe had met Tuesday evening
first with the chiefs of military and intelligence and then with top
members of his cabinet and the party presidium.

“They urged him to go to the bush,” the businessman said, meaning that
in a runoff the party would employ tactics of intimidation and
bloodshed that had worked well in earlier campaigns, especially in
rural areas that could be closed off to opposition candidates.

President Mugabe was said to hesitate. Once lauded as a liberator and
statesman, he became a ruthless autocrat, to be forever remembered for
murderous campaigns against his enemies and an ill-conceived takeover
of white-owned farmland that ended up wrecking the economy.

He feels a strong sense of rejection in the election results, and a
part of him wants to concede, according to the businessmanÂ’s account.
Still, he said, Mr. Mugabe was urged to continue — though how serious
these plans were could not be independently verified.

Mr. Matonga, the deputy information minister, said the ruling party
had “let the president down” in the initial election. “In terms of
strategy, we only applied 25 percent of our energy into this
campaign,” he told Agence France-Presse. The runoff “is when we are
going to unleash the other 75 percent that we did not apply in the
first case.”

If a runoff occurs, the opposition said it also is ready, according to
the party’s secretary general, Tendai Biti. “We’ll accept with
protest, but it is only a delay of the inevitable,” he said.

He predicted that the president would lose the rerun by “an
embarrassing margin” and suggested that Mr. Mugabe withdraw with
grace.

Mr. Biti also demanded that the election commission finish its count
of the voting for president, implying that something suspicious was in
the works. “There is a vacuum, and in a vacuum all sorts of mischief
fills in,” he said. “Harare is bubbling with conspiracies and
counterconspiracies.”

Mr. Biti said the election commissionÂ’s tallies for Parliament by and
large coincided with his partyÂ’s, because each side was working off
numbers that were posted at every polling station. The exception, he
said, was the province of Mashonaland Central, where there were
discrepancies.

The delay in publishing the results has brought international
criticism. In Romania, where President Bush is attending a meeting of
NATO leaders, a White House spokesman said Wednesday that the
administration supported calls for Mr. Mugabe to accept the results of
the election, suggesting that he should step aside, though stopping
short of calling on him to do so.

“It’s clear the people of Zimbabwe have voted for change,” said the
spokesman, Gordon D. Johndroe.

The mood among the opposition is buoyant. The results showed that it
had won several seats in rural areas where President Mugabe had
previously been enormously popular.

Patrick Chitaka won a Senate seat in rural Nyanga-Mutasa in Manicaland
Province. “We’ll wipe Mugabe out,” he said at the prospect of a
runoff. “People are tired of being poor, and now that they know the
bully can be thrashed theyÂ’ll come out in greater numbers than before.
Even the oldest people with canes will come.”

"I want justice...There's an old poster out West, as I recall, that
said, 'Wanted: Dead or Alive,'"
- G.W. Bush, 9/17/01, UPI

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It's not that important. It's not our priority."
- G.W. Bush, 3/13/02

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