If Donald Trump is interested in rigged elections, Zimbabwean opposition leader Tendai Biti says he could teach him a thing or two. Biti was arrested for treason and detained for a month after daring to suggest his party had defeated President Robert Mugabe in a vote in 2008.
Biti, a lawyer who later served as finance minister in an eventual unity government, told Reuters:
To opposition figures in Africa, and in other parts of the world that lack the 240-year US history of peaceful transitions of power, Trump's assertion that November's US presidential election will be "rigged", and his declaration that he may not accept the outcome, are dangerous words.
Long-serving rulers who have faced US criticism in the past are already using Trump's remarks to counter Washington's pro-democracy message.
When Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, in power for 30 years, won re-election to his seventh term in February, US officials accused his government of arresting opposition figures, harassing their supporters and intimidating the media.
Trump's comments, said Museveni's spokesman Don Wanyama, "should be an eye-opener to them. As they sit down to lecture other countries, they should realise that it's not easy."
"Democracy is a process and it really takes time."
Trump refused during a debate on Wednesday to say whether he would respect the result of the 8 November poll. That sent a chill down the spine of Musikari Kombo, a former local government minister in Kenya, where 1,500 people were killed in a wave of ethnic bloodletting unleashed by disputes over the result of a 2007 election.
US officials, including state governors from Trump's own Republican Party, say there is no serious vote fraud problem in the United States and the election will be clean.
Nevertheless, Trump and some allies have alleged anomalies in the voter roll in cities such as Philadelphia and Chicago that could allow the votes of dead people to be counted on behalf of his opponent, Hillary Clinton.
It is hard to think what they would have made of this year's election in Gabon, where opposition leader Jean Ping cried foul after narrowly losing to President Ali Bongo, whose family have ruled the oil-producing former French colony for half a century.
The focus of Ping's concern was the province of Haut-Ogooue, where results showed 95.46 percent of voters backed Bongo on a turnout of 99.9 percent, more than double anywhere else.
Gabon's constitutional court — led by the long-time mistress of Bongo's father, Omar — upheld the result.
"I would say to Mr. Trump 'Come to Gabon to see what a fake democracy looks like, to see what a stolen election looks like,'" said Alexandre Barro Chambrier, a senior Ping adviser.
"There is no democracy here. There is the rule of one family and one man imposing a dictatorial regime," he added. "Mr Trump is not serious."
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