Opposition party, MDC, leader Morgan Tsvangirai has today announced that he will pull out of the presidential election runoff which was meant to take place of Friday 27 June in Zimbabwe. “We in the MDC cannot ask them to cast their vote on the 27th when that vote would cost them their lives,” Tsvangirai told reporters. The news comes as a shock to many who had expected Tsvangirai to challenge Mugabe in the runoff and hope to take over as president of the country. But now that Tsvangirai has pulled out of the race, what is going to happen?

It is understandable why Tsvangirai has pulled out; many lives were being lost in Zimbabwe due to political violence as there was no way the elections were ever going to be free and fair. So Tsvangirai has decided to rather pull out of the vote and try stop lives being lost. Mugabe had said before that there was no way he (Mugabe) would loose the runoff election and accept Tsvangirai as the new president of Zimbabwe. Mugabe went as far as saying that he would declare war if Tsvangirai won the runoff vote.

Now that Tsvangirai has pulled out of the runoff, he has called upon the United Nations to intervene and help stop the violence in Zimbabwe. It will now be up to SADC and the AU (African Union) to step in and help provide a solution for Zimbabwe. But based on what we have seen, SADC have done very little about Zimbabwe, especially South Africa President, Thabo Mbeki who was appointed as the mediator for talks between the two political parties in Zimbabwe. Something has to be done about Zimbabwe before the situation gets out of hand. Some suggest that Zimbabwe should try have a government of national unity but it his very unlikely that the ruling ZANU PF party led by Robert Mugabe would welcome a government on national unity.

ZANU PF officials have come out today after Tsvangirai made the announcement and have said that the runoff vote will go ahead no matter what as the constitution states that a run off vote will take place. Another official has said that Tsvangirai has to state that he has pulled out of the vote in writting. The Zimbabwe constitution states that if Tsvangirai pulls out of the vote then Mugabe will be president by default which would be perfect for Mugabe.