Zimbabwe – Mugabe defeated in the election?

Nekkid blogger — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 04:58:42 +0000

Among the few very certain things in this world, is the fact that Mugabe has been a disaster for Zimbabwe. Fraud, corrupsion and poltical terror have been a fact of live for people in Zimbabwe for many years.

A land rich on resources and fairly well off at the time of independence have been reduced to one of the poorest countries in the world. Its GDP per capita have fallen with more than 80% since independence.

Now there may be a light in the tunnel, despite the fact that the desperate Robert Mugabe recruited dead voters (The Times) to rig the election.

According to The Guardian, the opposition claims that they have won the election in the country:

Zimbabwe’s opposition party claimed an overwhelming victory against President Robert Mugabe in yesterday’s presidential election, saying that the flow of results showed its candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, had ‘massacred’ the ruling Zanu-PF party.

The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) defied a government ban on pre-empting the official announcement of the election results and released the count from polling stations that showed Tsvangirai beating the man who has ruled Zimbabwe for 28 years, even in the president’s home territory of Mashonaland.

‘We’ve won this election,’ said Tendai Biti, the MDC’s secretary-general. ‘The results coming in show that in our traditional strongholds we are massacring them. In Mugabe’s traditional strongholds they are doing very badly. There is no way Mugabe can claim victory unless it is through fraud. He has lost this election.’

The government’s electoral commission has yet to release the counts formally. But the MDC said that declarations posted at polling stations across Zimbabwe last night, and gathered from its agents observing the counts, showed Tsvangirai ahead of Mugabe in every province where results were available. The most dramatic gap was in Mashonaland West, where the MDC candidate had 88 per cent of the vote to the president’s 12 per cent.

However, it is still too early to say. And even if the opposition should win, the likelihood of a peaceful transition of power is probably very, very small. The most likely outcome is that Mugabe will cling to power and a civil war will ensue.

In my opinion, that is.

PS: The election results are not forthcoming. Election observers now fears that this means that Mugabe is yet again doctoring the results. Journalists have not so far been able to ascertain when the results will be made public.
PS2: Read about some of the local election results from The Independent.

Some good readings about the election in Zimbabwe:

The Independent – Mugabe: the writing’s on the wall, Opposition leaders go into hiding as poll result is delayed
New York Times: Zimbabwe Opposition Insists Mugabe Lost
The Guardian: Zimbabwe opposition fears vote-rigging, Secret Mugabe meeting ponders military move or fixed result
Information (Danmark – in Danish): Dødt løb efter valg i Zimbabwe

Amazing amount of fraud in American charities

Nekkid blogger — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 23:42:37 +0000

I have always admired the fact that Americans devote so much time, energy, effort and money to charities. To me, this is one of many great things about American society.

However, I have often found myself to be pretty naive, too. And I may have been just that in this case as well.

While it is true that Americans do give, and some quite heavily, to charities, American charities may not be any better than charities in other parts of the world. I’ve seen many analyses of charities where 80 per cent, 90 per cent of the money, and in some cases even more, never reach the targeted group or purpose.

Lavish spending, bad subcontracting, high salaries, lawyers fees, and lots of other things have, in the bad cases, explained how the money have simply disappeared.

In a report by four professors who specialize in nonprofit accounting, the amount of loss as a result of fraud in non-profit organizations was estimated to be 40 billion dollars.

the typical theft from a charity was committed by a female employee with no criminal record who earned less than $50,000 a year and had worked for the nonprofit at least three years. The amount she stole was less than $40,000.

The most costly cases, the study found, involved male executives earning $100,000 to $149,000 a year. The thieves in such cases had typically been with the organization the longest.

..

If the $40 billion figure is accurate, then the money lost to fraud equaled the combined giving by corporations and foundations in 2006, said Diana Aviv, president and chief executive of the Independent Sector, which represents nonprofit groups.

But Ms. Aviv expressed skepticism about the report, noting that it relied on the fraud examiners association’s estimate of overall fraud across all sectors, including government and corporate.

“They’re lumping all those sectors together, and it could be that the for-profit sector experiences a higher level of fraud, while the nonprofit sector and government experience lower levels,” Ms. Aviv said.

Nonetheless, she said, “even if the figure is $20 billion, that’s still a huge amount and needs to be addressed.”

Now, 40 billion USD is approximately 13% of the money given to charities in 2006. That means, that on the average, 13 cents of every dollar you give disappears. That’s pretty bad!

So for the future, study your charity closely before you give. You may be paying for somebody’s retirement fund in a Swiss bank!

from the hip » Fraud

Zimbabwe – Mugabe defeated in the election?

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Amazing amount of fraud in American charities

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