Why hold a vote at all?
"Since liberation, the [ruling] ZANU-PF has see elections as a ritual that has to be gone through to give them legitimacy in the eyes of the region, the continent and the international community," says Ozias Tungwarara, a senior analyst for the Open Society Institute in Johannesburg. The ruling party is now desperate to have that legitimacy, after having lost the first round to Mr. Tsvangirai.
But, he says, "if you give the people even 20 percent of a chance to express themselves, there is no way the Mugabe regime would survive a vote," and thus, the regime uses violence to seal off any chance of legitimate political expression.
This touches on one of the reasons why nations hold elections, but not one of the more legitimate ones.
