Friday 25 April 2008

The NUT industrial action

On Thursday, April 24th, the National Union of Teachers (NUT) members went on strike for one day, but there is the possibility of further action in the future. The reason for the strike was poor pay and conditions, however I think that this is a dubious claim and the type of action was the wrong one.

The following is a statement from the NUT website:
"Thousands of members turned out to support this day of action. It shows the NUT made the right decision to call upon its members to strike. Erosion of teachers’ pay is now firmly on the public agenda as a result. We have highlighted the case for pay which at least keeps up with the rate of inflation as measured by RPI."
So, the main point is that they feel they are not being paid enough for the work that they do. I will agree that teachers do an absurdly large amount of work and can get very stressed as a result. However, I do think they get decent wages. In this document, the following pay scales are shown:
Level E & W I. Ldn O. Ldn Fringe
M1 £20,133 £24,168 £23,118 £21,102
M2 £21,726 £25,548 £25,548 £22,692
M3 £23,472 £27,327 £26,247 £24,438
M4 £25,278 £29,328 £28,053 £26,250
M5 £27,270 £31,584 £30,432 £28,239
M6 £29,427 £33,936 £32,751 £30,393
N.B.: E&W = England and Wales, I. Ldn = Inner London, O. Ldn = Outer London

That doesn't seem too bad, even on the bottom end of the scale. It means that a relatively inexperienced teacher gets more than I do in a year. However, that is an unfair comparison as their work goes beyond 9-5. I'll compare the above rates of pay with the wages in nursing - another high pressure job with long hours:
Level Min.(£) Max.(£)
Band 1 12,182 13,253
Band 2 12,577 15,523
Band 3 14,437 17,257
Band 4 16,853 20,261
Band 5 19,683 25,424
Band 6 23,458 31,779
Band 7 28,313 37,326
Band 8A 36,112 43,335
Band 8B 42,064 52,002
Band 8C 50,616 62,402
Band 8D 60,669 75,114
Band 9 71,646 90,607
According to the NHS payscales, a teacher at the M1 level in England and Wales gets paid more than:
  • Clinical support workers (both nursing and community)
  • Clinical support workers - higher level (nursing, community and mental health)
  • Maternity care assistants
  • Nurse associate practitioners (acute, community and mental health)
  • Nursery nurse (community)
  • Midwife (entry level)
A more experienced, M6 level teacher gets more than those plus most non-management nurses. I should point out that there's a scale of pay for teachers above the one that I have shown where they get paid more and advanced skill teachers can get over £30, 000. These numbers make me think that teacers aren't the ones who are struggling.

Support for the strike
Despite this, there are groups who support the strike. The University and Colleges Union (UCU) and the National Union of Students (NUS) recently did demonstrations that called for teachers to get better pay.


Photo originally taken by Dave Lewis and can be found here.

Finances
In the Independent, there were quotes from a few supporters and they were mainly people who'd recently graduated from university and were still saddled with debt:

Carrie-Ann Taylor earns £25,000 a year and is paying back her student loan at a rate of £1,000 per month:
"That's half my income gone. I'm getting a 2.45 per cent pay award but inflation is at about 4.5 per cent. Even as an English teacher I can see that the maths doesn't work."
Catherine Tooley survived on £3,000 as a student and is paying back her loan with a rate of 4.8% interest:
""Only half that as a pay rise is a bit of an insult," she said. "I have to spend part of the summer holiday working at another job to pay back this debt I got in order to be a teacher."
I have to agree that the situations described above are tough ones. When I was studying for my degree I often heard stories of people struggling due to lack of funds. For some of them that was the case even if they had a proper budget and didn't spend their money too quickly. However, paying back their student loans won't be as difficult as it is for other people.

Other teaching unions and the government
It seems the NUT are the only union that want strike action (it's important to note that even though the UCU want better pay for teachers, their members are not on strike). The Association of Teachers and Lecturers strongly advise their members to not show support as they say the action is unlawful. The NASUWT agree with the pay offer and have no plans to strike. According to their website, when other teaching unions go on strike, it is unlawful for any NASUWT member to join them.

According to this article, all of the main political parties condemn the strike aswell. With this lack of support from a number of major bodies, their chances of getting what they want have to have been reduced.

What about the children?
  • In Liverpool, 135 schools were either closed or had to turn some pupils away. Council officials had predicted 67.
  • In Birmingham, predictions were that 75 schools would be affected; 164 closed and 84 turned some pupils away.
  • Camden, Nottinghamshire, Worcestershire, Warwick, Middlesbrough, Oxfordshire, Doncaster and Bristol all reported more schools affected by the strike.
  • In Wales, half of schools were shut or partially shut.
Those stats were in this article. The children who go to the schools in all of those areas had their education interrupted. It might only have been for a day, but that could still cause problems as it's e.g. harder to get all the required knowledge across to the pupils/students in the time that they have (that will be even more apparent if there is more strike action).

This also affects working parents. They will have to rush to find necessary childcare for the time that would normally be taken up by school. They might even have to take a day off, which will disrupt their working routines too.

Summary and Conclusion
As I have alreay mentioned, teachers have an incredibly stressful job. The media piles pressure on the curriculum that they teach and they can frequently get abuse from some of the pupils/students. They may even get criticised by parents at times. However, they do get decent pay (especially when comparing it to some people in the medical profession) and the strike action is unlawful. Any future action has the potential to harm the progress of many pupils/students. In short, I didn't support the action that took place yesterday and I won't support further action from the NUT either.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: NUT, Strike, Teachers, Employment

Wednesday 23 April 2008

Pennsylvania Wars: Clinton Strikes Back


Photo taken by Barbara Kinney

Before the voting day in Pennsylvania, many people felt that Obama would lose in that state. He was behind in the polls and the citizens are people who fall into the categories that typically vote for Clinton. However, I'm always skeptical about polls - especially after the surprise in Iowa earlier on this year.

Anyway, as the results show, the polls were correct:
CandidateVote %ageDelegates
Hillary Clinton5552
Barack Obama4546
This is undoubtedly a good result for her as it's a big state with plenty of delegates and it will give her a certain amount of momentum. However, it's not as big a margin as everyone thinks.

It seems that even after all this time, the media still doesn't undertand how the election process works in the US. They are all reporting the "big" 10% gap and forgetting that the vote percentage counts for absolutely nothing. The important statistic is the relatively small difference between the two in terms of delegates (six). That doesn't prove there's a huge swing towards Hillary (which is why I said 'a certain amount of momentum').

This is what Hillary had to say after the results were announced:
"You know, some people counted me out and said to drop out. But the American people don't quit, and they deserve a president who doesn't quit, either"
It's true - she hasn't quit. It would have been easy to do that earlier on because Obama continually won primaries and got to the point where he went past her delegate count. However, she realises that there is still time to overtake him because there are 9 Democrat primaries/caucuses and numerous delegates left before the the party's convention.

As a side note, it seems that Mike Gravel dropped out a few weeks ago. It shows how effective his campaign was when the media barely report it. I was thinking that he decided to remain in the race because he wanted to do some profiling before a run as an independent. However, due to the lack of media coverage I doubt that many people will know about him when the general election starts.

So, what about John McCain? I haven't heard much from this guy lately. It's possible that he could be pleased that the Democrat race is still going on. It means that there is still indecisiveness among the party and that could give him an advantage. It also means he has a bit more time to prepare his general election campaign. However, the continuing Democrat contest gives more media coverage to that party. It means that the voting population know more about the candidates and what they stand for. To stop this from being a problem, I think McCain needs to start doing a lot more.

According to the polls, the presumptive GOP nominee is way behind Obama and Clinton. As an example, here are the fundraising totals for March:
CandidateMoney ($)
Barack Obama40m
Hillary Clinton20m
John McCain15m
It's amazing that Obama is able to raise twice as much as Hillary and 25m more than McCain in just one month. It'll give him a great advantage interms of creating publicity if he becomes his party's candidate.

It's interesting that, despite all that Obama momentum and the total dominance of McCain on the Republican side, there are still some sections of the media that have a bias towards Clinton. Take this article in the Telegraph as an example. All it mentions is Hillary. It's almost as if nobody else was running. I wonder if this is still the case on some of the US media networks aswell.

Another thing that hasn't changed is the ability of each candidate to use tired clichés. On Monday's episode of WWE RAW, each candidate made a short speech about why they should be the President. Each speech contained a healthy dose of clichés that were (presumably) included so that they would appear to be in touch with the people that they are talking to. There were classics such as "the election is like the King of the Ring" and "Can you smell what Barack is cookin'?". Oh dear. I'm sorry, but if they wanted to appear 'in touch', they should have avoided those and respected the intelligence of the fans by just talking about policies.

Anyway, the race to the Whitehouse carries on and the conventions to decide the candidates are getting closer (I say that because McCain is only presumptive and, technically, the delegates still have to cast their votes). There will be many people who will be glad when this lengthy process is over, but I have found it both interesting and enlightening.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: USA, Election, Politics, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama

Tuesday 15 April 2008

Zimbabwe - the current situation

Since my last post about the problems in Zimbabwe, there has been even more developments - most of them are worrying. There has been increasing pressure on the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission and even more comment from the international community as well as further involvement from South Africa.

The ZEC and the results
The results of the presidential part of the Zimbabwean elections have not been announced yet and the Movement for Democratic Change (the opposition party led by Morgan Tsvangirai) has gone through the courts to get this information released.

The decision in the court case was recently revealed in the state-owned newspaper, The Herald:
"HIGH Court judge Justice Tendayi Uchena yesterday dismissed with costs an application by MDC-T seeking an order compelling the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission to announce results of the presidential election"
This can only be seen as an unfortunate result for the MDC. Later on in that article, it's reported that a spokesman for the ZEC mentioned that it was up to them when the results should be released. That same spokesman also said that the "integrity" of the ZEC should not be questioned and that "trying to interfere with the independence of ZEC would create problems in future".

The Constitution
It's interesting that he used the word independence in his statement. Let's examine that. The following is from the Constitution of Zimbabwe, which was created in the year that Mugabe took power:
"1. There shall be a commission to be known as the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission which shall consist of:
a. a chairman who shall be a judge of the High Court or the Supreme Court or a person qualified to be appointed as a judge of the High Court or the Supreme Court appointed by the President after consultation with the Judicial Service Commission

b. six other members, at least three of whom shall be women, appointed by the President from a list of nine nominees submitted by the Committee on Standing Rules and Orders.
2. If the appointment of a chairman of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission is not consistent with any recommendation of the Judicial Service Commission in terms of subsection (1)(a), the President shall cause Parliament to be informed as soon as practicable."
This basically states that the chairman and all other members of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission are appointed by the President (Mugabe). It also states that he must consult with the judicial branch when appointing the chair, but (according to section 84 of the constitution), Mugabe also selects the judges. These facts mean that the ZEC can't possibly be independent. If you read the full article in the state-owned The Herald, you'll notice that this issue isn't raised - Mugabe wouldn't want the population knowing all the facts.

Thabo Mbeki and the SADC
The Southern African Development Community has enlisted the South African President, Thabo Mbeki, as the person who will mediate with them and Zimbabwe. At the moment, Mbeki feels that there is no crisis in that country:
"There is no crisis in Zimbabwe....The body authorised to release the results is the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, let's wait for them to announce the results,"
What the South African leader fails to understand is that even though the ZEC are the group that release the results, they are not independent. Theoretically, Mugabe could influence them so that they delay the announcment for several months.

Another indication that Mbeki is out of touch his own party, the ANC, disagreeing with him:
"The ANC regards the (Zimbabwe) ruling party ZANU-PF as an ally. However it is concerned with the state of crisis that Zimbabwe is in and perceives this as negative for the entire SADC region"
Oh dear - was he really the right choice for mediation and diplomatic duties in this situation?

A strike
The MDC stated that there should be a general strike (in the form of a 'stay-in'). They felt that it would force the ZEC into releasing the results. A lot of citizens ignored this as they simply cannot afford a strike and the unemployment rate is 80%, so people have questioned whether it would make a difference. I feel that any strike at this stage would be a bad move for the MDC. Doing nothing would give Mugabe more time and it's unlikely that the ZEC would be influenced anyway.

Violence
The following is from this article:
"Government spokesman Bright Matonga said the only violence in Zimbabwe was by the opposition MDC party, which he said had "sent their youth to burn down property."
This was said in response to the MDC's accusations of intimidation and suggestion that Mugabe uses youth militias. What Zanu-PF (the current ruling party) fail to point out is that their supporters have been clearly violent and in one reported case, they have even killed an MDC supporter. The Zimbabwe police claim that the violence isn't political, but that is ridiculous. However, I guess the police were forced to say that as they are run by the government.

David Miliband and the UN Charter
The UK's Foreign Secretary recently stated that "The international community, given the consequences of the situation there, has a responsibility also to engage with the issues". I'm pleased to see that this stance has been adopted. Non-military action by external countries is the way forward in this situation. In my previous blog post I stated that no country has the right to intervene by using force.

Morgan Tsvangirai recently called for the intervention of the UN and other countries, but it's important to remember that the UN or it's members cannot take military action as it's only a domestic issue. If Mugabe is re-elected, it would not e.g. greatly affect the economic status of all the other nations. If military action was taken right now, the Charter of the United Nations would be broken (in several places).

For instance, point 1 of Article 1 states that the UN should maintain international peace and security. Starting a war would be the exact opposite of that (anyone remember Iraq?). Point 4 of Article 2 states that:
"All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state"
Only using military force in international situations is also mentioned in articles 41 and 42.

Conclusion and Summary
The biased Zibabwe Electoral Commission is delaying the results and isn't stating when they will be released. The result of a court case means that there is no progress. The MDC is (worryingly) making some questionable decisions such as proposing a strike, but fortunately nothing happened with that. The international community can do nothing but continue to impose sanctions. Alongside that, it seems that violence is increasing dramatically and it only improves the chances of Mugabe being re-elected. However, as he has lost the parliamentary election, how much power would he have?

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, Election, Government

Tuesday 8 April 2008

Ofcom's social networking report

There have been many developments in social networks recently. It all started with the likes of Friendster and Friends Reunited. Now we have Facebook and many more people hoping to mimic or eclipse the success of Facebook's creator, Mark Zuckerberg. The positives and negatives of this variety of website were looked at in Ofcom's recent report called Social Networking: A quantitative and qualitative research report into attitudes, behaviours and use. This blog post is an analysis of that report.

What were the objectives?
  • to set social networking sites in the wider media literacy, online and communications context
  • to profile the use of sites
  • to understand people’s use of sites
  • to investigate concerns about privacy and safety
Looking at these makes me think that Ofcom didn't make any large assumptions before conducting the research. They will also be looking into one of the most important issues that has been talked about recently - security, which makes the report relevant. One concern I do have is that they are using significance testing. There is an argument against this as it can require a lot of benefit for very little benefit. You could quite easily create this report and ignore statistical signifcance.

Research methodologies
This is an area of the report where I have major concerns. It is absolutely vital to get the methodology right. If you don't, there's a risk of the data being misinterpreted and it being unrepresentative. This social networking report makes use of multiple methodologies.

The work that was done especially for this report has a sample size that is far too small (52). That means that the outcomes are likely to be unrepresentative of the UK's opinion. There is also an unfair weighting given to the users of social networks (39 of of that 52 are users). It would be much better if the ratio was 1:1. People who have used social networks before also had to complete a small task beforehand. We have no idea of what that task was, or if there was a time limit. Another thing is that we don't know if the experience of those who are users is equal. Finally, the observation is done using pairs, groups of three and groups of four. I see no point in having anything other than the pairs.

For complete descriptions of the methodologies in the other sources, look at Annex 1 of the report. Here are some of the problems I have with those sources:
  • In the report Ofcom Media Literacy Adult Audit research, they class adults as 16+, which is completely wrong of courses and means that an inappropriate group of people are used in the results. The sample size is bigger (2905), but it's not necessarily representative. There is also no specifics of the weightings used on the old census data and we don't know the diversity of the sample.
  • In the Ofcom Communications Tracking Survey, adults are incorrectly defined as 15+ and we don't know the specific of the weighting system that they state is used to make the data representative.
  • The Ofcom Young People and Media Tracking Survey is used, but we aren't told about the weighting and data is used from 2001 (the census).
  • Third party research is also used and I don't know about the methdologoies used there. I wonder if they're up to standard!
Engaging with social networks
This section looks at internet usage and rules imposed regarding the use of social networking. It therefore means that the reader will have a better idea about how popular social networking is at what it's limits are.

An early part of this section uses this article as a reference. The article is about Trasport for London stopping it's employees from using Facebook.
"UK users spend an average three hours 11 minutes on the site each month, according to data from web monitoring firm comScore, slightly lower than the global average of three hours 41 minutes."
This might be true, but what if the employees complete their work to the required standard, despite their usage of the site. 11 minutes isn't a lot. Also, how much of that 11 minutes of use was during work hours? You also have to remember that this decision was based on "concerns", rather than 'evidence'.

It's interesting that the people who noted this used F.W. Taylor's Scientific Management model. That's the one that states money is the most important thing and determines whether an employee works hard. Elton Mayo performed the more recent Hawthorne Studies and found it's not necessarily the most important factor. He found that a pleasant work environment that has the occasional break is important to. Maslow discovered (using his hierarchy of needs research) that both structure and socialising are crucial. Surely these two studies prove that employees shouldn't be banned from using social networks and providing that they don't use them 24 hours a day, that break from work could actally improve overall performance.

Other rules are generally imposed on children as some parents feel that too much internet usage can have negative effects. Section 4.6 of the report states that rules include not being allowed to meet someone in person after you have befriended them online and revealing personal details. I can understand the one about befriending people online though because some children may not realise that some of those people could be paedophiles.

Attitudes and usage of social networks
Sections 5 and 6 concentrate on these areas. Section 5 focuses on the types of people who use social networks and the reasone why some sections of the public don't use them. Apparently, the categories that the users tend to fall into include "Alpha socialisers" (those who like making new friends at every opportunity), "Attention seekers", "Followers", "Faithfuls" (those use use the sites to strengthen existing relationships) and "Functionals" (these are the people who use a site for a specific purpose, such as finding out information about a potential employee, or looking at upcoming events for a local band).

The report states that those who don't use social networks are people who think they're a "waste of time", think there are too many security issues or are people who don't have enough IT expertise. This information is both interesting and useful.

The report mentions that these benefits include being "a tool to build confidence", "an easy way to link up with old friends" and being "an efficient way to manage existing relationships". It also points out some negatives though. For instance:
"Some younger respondents who were committed users of these sites reported using them ‘to get back at people they had fallen out with’, by posting rude or abusive message on their sites or even going so far as to set up a fake site in the person’s name and posting obscene messages about them."
I don't think that section 6 tells society anything new at all - it simply confirms what we already know.

Privacy and safety
Section 7.3 of the report lists the following risks:
  • Leaving the privacy settings ‘open’ as default
  • Giving out personal information
  • Posting personal photographs
  • Becoming online friends with people they did not know
  • Meeting people they didn’t know
The report (correctly) states that these problems often arise due to a lack of expertise, lack of reasoned judgement or a feeling of invincibility (particularly relevant with young children and teenagers). It is also true that registration procedures for some websites are totally ineffective. For instance, without an image of a randomised code for the user to enter during the signup process, it easy easy for 'bots' to enter a site. It is also easy to work out what birth dates would mean you are above the minimum age to use a social network.

However, not everything is the fault of the social network. Many make great efforts to provide help systems, technical support and customisable privacy settings. It's up to the users to take notice of these before they consider using a service - it's common sense.

Conclusion
This report gives the reader plenty of interesting information in a well structured document. There are plenty of fairly useful facts and statistics, but I don't think it tells us many new things (e.g. we already know there are privacy concerns). I am also really worried that they haven't taken care with the research methodologies, which risks making a lot of the work useless.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: Social Networking, Ofcom, Internet, Privacy

Thursday 3 April 2008

Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe

1980 will always be perceived as an important year in the history of Zimbabwe. It was the year the Robert Mugabe became Prime Minister of the country. He stayed in that position until 1987. After that he was appointed President and discontinued the role of Prime Minister. It meant he had increased powers and control over the country. Prior to 1980, he was the Secretary General to parties that were supressed due to their opposition to white rule. His current part is the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF).

Despite is involvement in the end of white majority rule in that country, he has made several decisions which have had catastrophic effects. To say he is reviled by the international community is an understatement. Over the past 28 years, the economy has spiralled out of control, healthcare is poor and foreign-relations are non-existant.

The economy
In this article, it's reported that the current rate of inflation is 24,000%. The country has also recently introduced a $10m bank note. As an example of the price change of products, the current retail price of the state-owned Herald newspaper is $3m. That is a 200,000% more than it's price in January 2007. A further example is the value of basic food ingredients. On the TV news yesterday I noticed that a simple bag of flour was $12.5m. These statistics mean that citizens find it difficult to get information about what is going on and also starve becasue they cannot afford the basics for meals. So, Mugabe wanted an end to the white majority rule and he's now forgotten about the people he fought for in the first place.

International relations
I don't believe that nations such as the United States have any right to intervene in the running of the country, regardless of whether they oppose Mugabe. However, this doesn't mean they cannot apply sanctions. In this document, there are details about restrictions, which include the following:
"The new Executive Order prohibits U.S. persons, wherever located, or anyone in the United States from engaging in any transactions with any person, entity or organization found to: 1.) be undermining democratic institutions and processes in Zimbabwe; 2.) have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support to these entities; 3.) be or have been an immediate family member of a sanctions target; or 4.) be owned, controlled or acting on behalf of a sanctions target."
This means that a US citizen cannot conduct any business with the current Zimbabwean government or it's supporters. The European Union has also implemented sanctions and these include travel to Zimbabwean government members being banned from travelling to EU countries and European-based assets being frozen. The EU ruling was introduced in 2002, but it has already been broken as Mugabe was allowed to attend an EU-Africa summit last year. At that event he signed a pledge which meant he would introduce democracy. Allowing him to attend that summit means the strength of the sanctions has been weakened and that 'pledge' doesn't necessarily mean he'd do anything.

Honours and awards
This has proven to be a highly controversial subject. In June 2007, The Times reported that Mugabe had just been stripped of an honorary degree that had been awarded to him by the University of Edinburgh in 1984. That was the time that a British university has done that. The University of Massechusetts has also given him an honrary degree in the past and there was a large camapign to revoke that award aswell.

In March 2007, Andrew Robathan MP called for Mugabe's Order of the Bath medal to be revoked. However, Margaret Beckett (the Foreign Secretary at the time) felt that there were more important matters to deal with. While it's true that the oppression of the Zimbabwean people takes priority, I do not believe that Robert Mugabe should have any awards such as those that I have mentioned. They are for people who have achieved great things, not for people who destroy countries and intimidate people.

The opposition
For many years, the largest opposition body has been the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), which is lead by Morgan Tsvangirai. His period as leader of that party hasn't been easy. In 2003, he was arrested for organising anti-government protests. This was a move to silence both competition and free speech - both would mean that his control over the country would have been weakened. In 2004, the Guardian reported that Tsvangirai had been accused of plotting to assassinate Mugabe, but he was later found to be not guilty. If it was true, it would have meant that Tsvangirai had gone down to Mugabe's level - that would have been terrible.

Elections
In Zimbabwe, there are separate elections for the House of Assembly (210 seats), the Senate (93 seats) and the role of President. Both the lower (Assembly) and upper (Senate) houses operate on plurality voting systems (First Past The Post) and the election for President is uses Universal Adult Franchise, which basically means you can vote if you're an adult. If none of the presidential candidates receives 50% of the vote, there is a runoff between those with the most votes.

At the time of typing, Mugabe's Zanu-PF has lost the elections for the houses. The full results can be found here. Tsvangirai's MDC won with 99 seats, compared to Zanu-PF's 97.

As for the Presidential election, one of two things could happen. Either Mugabe will step down and Tsvangirai would be elected, or there would be a runoff as neither man as achieved the required 50% (despite the MDC saying otherwise). This could potentially take a long time and would give Mugabe an opportunity to use coercion to get people to vote for him.

Conclusion
Robert Mugabe has destroyed the quality of life for the people of Zimbabwe, despite being involved in the ending of white majority rule. International relations are hostile and he uses intimidation to retain control. In short, he has to go. Morgan Tsvangirai would have to keep his promises though. Without that, sanctions would not be lifted and the country would go nowhere.

So, what do you think?

Technorati tags: Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, Election, Government