MANY Seychellois is following with great interest what is taking place in Zimbabwe. One of the main reasons is that a few years back, Mr. Mugabe was a good friend of our former President. Although in Seychelles we have many presidents, we are talking here about the presidents coming from the same system we have been living under for the past 3 decades. Like somebody once said, Seychelles is said to be a multiparty democracy but with a one-party state of mind.
The same is the case for Zimbabwe. The interesting factor is that although there has been much victimization of Zimbabweans supporting the opposition party, they still went ahead and vote for the opposition in the parliamentary election and most probably did the same for the presidential election. But then again some president, believe that a country is theirs especially when they have been in power for too long and they will do anything to remain in power. So everybody sees a second round of presidential election in Zimbabwe as being a joke because the one in power will do anything to discourage opposition voters as is presently happening.
This is why that in a real democracy, experts believe that a president can only stand for election twice. But in most African countries this is sadly not the case and some people wants to die in power. In Seychelles we are hardly an exception and many people are still afraid of putting somebody else in charge. It's a case of better the devil you know than one you don't know but then they tend to forget that in life there is a proverb that says 'nothing ventured nothing gained'. If we are unhappy with something in our life and we simply sit back and do nothing to change it, don't expect it to get better, in fact most of the time it gets worse.
So right now all eyes are turned on Zimbabwe and we are watching just how far a leader will go to win an election and who will be sacrificed in the process.