The Poor Billionaires of Zimbabwe

The Seattle Times: Zimbabwe's economy is so destitute that just the cost of running Saturday's election will lurch the nation toward bankruptcy.

Once a regional economic powerhouse and food exporter, Zimbabwe now relies on humanitarian food aid. Its towns and rural roads are lined with threadbare children in rags, or barefoot men.

With inflation running at 100,000 percent, President Robert Mugabe recently announced that prices would remain fixed at February levels. But after printing trillions of Zimbabwean dollars to fund 700 percent pay raises to civil servants and gifts of cars and tractors to rural chiefs, the government has been unable to deliver on that promise. Independent economists say inflation has now risen to 200,000 percent and predict it could rise to 500,000 percent by May.

Even just manning the 9,000 polling booths puts a severe strain on government finances. Mugabe's desperate election spending spree could be his last, analysts predict. The financial implosion could be the beginning of the end for the 84-year-old president, even if he clings to power in Saturday's presidential and parliamentary elections.This is yet to come crashing down on us. It's a tsunami ... waiting to crash down in the form of massively high inflationary pressures," said independent economist John Robertson. A decade ago, the money pumping through Zimbabwe's economy was worth $350 billion. Now the nation's money supply amounts to just $98 million, according to Robertson. "That amount of money is not enough for any important project for the country. If you were to build a shopping center, that would not be enough to finish the job," he said.

Many have predicted Mugabe's downfall as the country lurched into chaos in recent years, but he's proved a wily political survivor who delights in taunting rivals. Mugabe, who has run the nation since it became independent in 1980, needs more than 50 percent of the vote to avoid a second round of balloting. His main rival, opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, has seen a surge of support, even in rural areas that are normally Mugabe strongholds.

The wild card is Simba Makoni, a former member of the ruling ZANU-PF, who is hoping to attract enough support from disenchanted ruling-party and opposition supporters to come out on top. A recent poll of nearly 1,700 voters gave Tsvangirai 29 percent support, Mugabe 20 percent and Makoni 9 percent. Mugabe has warned he will not tolerate protests from the opposition should they lose. Reports in recent days of 3 million excess ballot papers being printed have fueled fears the regime will rig the vote.

Adding to the above, some disturbing statistics include 1) 1 in 5 adults is infected with HIV, 2) women have a life expectancy of 34 years-lowest in the world and 3) Unemployment rate is more than 80%. For information, officially USD1=30,000 Zimbabwean dollars but in real life, the USD1 will get you about 35 mil Zimbabwean dollars (this figure fluatuates daily in the black market) Converted to ringgit would be RM1 =10.9 mil Zimbabwean dollars. Imagine having a teh tarik and roti telur for morning breakfast in a food stall in Zimbabwe will cost you about 24 mil dollars....Lets hope that Zimbabwean will be able to vote for a change...the citizens do not deserve such harsh living conditions.