He can have himself another day or a few more hours of sleep in the cocoon he has conjured up but the reality is the heads of security agencies will have to salute and yield to the will of the people of Zimbabwe.

“How they are rigging the election at this very moment
Mugabe’s spies are using a simple but effective technique to rob Tsvangirai of victory – and not be caught doing it
Harare, Zimbabwe, Tuesday, April 1, 5.0 pm
Sources within the fearsome Central Intelligence Agency (CIO) have told me this afternoon that the Zimbabwe security chiefs, who nearly came to blows yesterday, have reached a compromise – and instructed the CIO to finally fix this election in Mugabe’s favour.
The CIO’s task is to falsify the voting figures in a way that appears to give logical and expected results, and thus becomes unchallengeable. With the eyes of the world on this election, the power men know that any fraud has to be virtually undetectable.
The technique was explained to me by my source, who told me it is being put into effect at this moment. This is how it works.
In the case of the race for the position of President, votes are being stolen from Tsvangirai. The votes have to be credited to another candidate, to keep voting numbers correct. But they are not being given to Mugabe. They go instead to Simba Makoni.
Why? Because there are some areas – Bulawayo is a good example – where Zanu-PF parliamentary candidates have made such a poor showing that any extra votes recorded there for Mugabe, the party leader, would seem illogical, and rightly condemned as evidence of rigging.
But by diminishing Tsvangirai’s vote total and giving the difference to Makoni, Mugabe gains overall, and no-one will query the higher total for Makoni, who in any case was expected to do better than he has.
If this technique is applied across the nation, it will certainly be sufficiently effective to either give Mugabe an overall victory, or at least ensure a runoff.
Virtually the same technique is being applied to fix the parliamentary elections. Only in this case votes are taken from the candidates of the Tsvangirai faction of the MDC, and added to the totals of candidates from the smaller faction led by Arthur Mutambara.
Once again it is Zanu-PF that benefits by cutting down the votes for the Tsvangirai candidates, and giving the seats to the Mutambara faction.
The plan can be seen working already in the so-called official results. The Mutambara faction failed dismally in early returns, but has recently mysteriously gained ground against the Tsvangirai faction, and now commands, for instance, five seats in Matabeleland.
That’s the joint plan to fix these elections, put as simply as I can. Those who wonder why the results are being held back and released so slowly need wonder no more.” (Zimbabwe Today.)

Is there anyone from opposition monitoring the verification process at ZEC?

I just saw a flash on AP that Bob is about to go on Zimbabwe TV to address the nation, is this accurate?

Total votes for Mberengwa West constituency

PVT – 5639
ZEC – 8735

Have you seen the speculation on the BBC about Mugabe agreeing to step down? First ‘MDC sources’ say it is happening, then Zanu PF (Bright Mutonga) says it is not, then the SA govt (Mbeki spokesman) says it is not, then even the MDC (Nelson Chamisa) says it is not… doesn’t look likely, but I hope I’m wrong and the first report is right.

For example, how can almost 3000 extra votes appear in Mberengwa West between close of poll and the ZEC counting??? – look at the totals:

Mp Party PVT ZEC
Joram Macdonald Gumbo ZanuPF 4119 5508
Gwatipedza Dube MDC Tsvangirai 1520 2912
Calvin Trust Silape Independent 0 315

Totals 5639 8735