Mugabe to go down fighting: analysts

By Cris Chinaka - Analysis

HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe is likely to resist pressure to make a graceful exit and go down fighting in an election runoff with opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, analysts said on Wednesday.

"Mugabe is a high stakes political gambler, and I think he is going to go for it with everything he can marshal. But I don't think he can reverse his fortunes," said Brian Kagoro, a lawyer and political commentator.

A senior Western diplomat, who asked not to be named, said "He is not the type that quietly walks away into the sunset. I don't think he will take up any of these offers of an exit deal."

The signs are clear that Mugabe's iron grip on the country is slipping after 28 years in power and even his control of powerful security forces and militias will not save him.

Official results on Wednesday showed Mugabe's ZANU-PF party had lost control of parliament after the combined opposition parties built an unassailable lead. This will weaken Mugabe's important powers of patronage.

Cracks have appeared in the previously monolithic ZANU-PF even if fear has stopped many powerful figures openly backing former finance minister Simba Makoni, the third candidate in the election.

Makoni and a breakaway faction of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) are likely to unite behind veteran Mugabe rival Tsvangirai in a runoff.

"Mugabe will go into any re-run a very desperate man, and I see him being beaten very badly, getting humiliated," said Eldred Masunungure, a political science professor at the University of Zimbabwe.

Kagoro agreed: "He cannot win this election because he is fighting the economy, and the economy is in such bad shape you cannot gloss over it without looking ridiculous."

ECONOMY IN FREEFALL

Mugabe's hardline politics have pushed the former British colony's economy into freefall, with the world's highest inflation at more than 100,000 percent, a virtually worthless currency, shortages of food and fuel and an HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Tsvangirai's MDC said on Wednesday it had won the presidential election despite charging widespread government vote-rigging.

MDC Secretary-General Tendai Biti said they would accept a runoff even though they had won an absolute majority of 50.3 percent of the presidential vote. They said Mugabe would be embarrassed by any runoff.

Deputy Information Minister Bright Matonga, however, said "President Mugabe is going nowhere" and emphasized the support he has from his security forces.

Asked if Mugabe would accept defeat in a runoff, he told Sky television: "He is a gentleman. He is professional and he understands these things."