Mugabe Running Headlong Towards Dictatorship

As I've been reporting for some time now, Robert Mugabe has been running headlong towards turning Zimbabwe into his personal dictatorship. He's destroyed the economy, threatened and murdered opposition leaders and their relatives, and has outright stated that he will not abide by the results of the June 27 runoff elections with Morgan Tsvangirai should the opposition win.

Some countries are trying to get Zimbabwe's neighbors to pressure Mugabe into accepting the results of the runoff elections should Mugabe lose, but that's going to be tough given that South Africa is running interference for Mugabe and is providing him with sufficient support so as to make it impossible for anyone to accept that the elections will be held fairly and openly.

The US and British governments want Mugabe to allow international monitors to oversee the elections, but that's not likely to go anywhere despite what British Prime Minister Gordon Brown had to say:

"In recent weeks, under Robert Mugabe's increasingly desperate and criminal regime, Zimbabwe has seen 53 killings, 2000 beatings, the displacement of 30,000 people, the arrest and detention of opposition leaders including Morgan Tsvangirai," Brown told a joint news conference after talks with U.S. President George W. Bush.

"This is wholly unacceptable. Mugabe must not be allowed to steal the election."

"That is why we call for Zimbabwe to accept a United Nations human rights envoy to visit Zimbabwe now and to accept international monitors from all parts of the world who are available to ensure that this is a free and fair election," Brown said.

Mugabe is also quite busy pulling a page from the Burmese junta - claiming that aid groups operating in Zimbabwe to provide humanitarian aid including food and basic services that his government cannot and will not provide are conspiring against him.

So what does Tsvangirai think of these ongoing developments? Well, he's got a fatalist streak tempered with a misplaced hope that the international community will come to his nation's aid, that's for sure. It's hard not to, considering that his fellow opposition leaders are being hounded incessantly and the population is being cowed by Mugabe's thugs who are relentlessly engaging in violence against those who are standing in the way of Mugabe retaining power indefinitely. So, while you get the President Bush and PM Brown calling on the international community to take a stronger stand, nothing gets done and Mugabe continues to tighten his grip on the country.

UPDATE:
This sums up how Mugabe and his thugs view elections:

"We shed a lot of blood for this country. We are not going to give up our country for a mere X on a ballot. How can a ball point pen fight with a gun?" the Herald, a government mouthpiece, quoted Mugabe as saying.