Despite entering into the election race with a "heavy heart" and the odds heavily stacked against his favour, Zimbabwe's Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has refused to back down from the election contest.
Months leading to the national election, Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF resisted key political reforms as outlined by the power sharing agreement signed in September 2008, while the military's top brass has publicly lent its support to Mugabe.
A partisan state media has also been instrumental in giving free live coverage of all 10 of Mugabe's rallies held nationwide throughout the month – while denying the MDC media space.
A belligerent MDC became fiercely critical in the days leading up to the election contest, perhaps having a sudden realisation that victory could be stolen away from it again by Mugabe.
In the last elections held in 2002 and 2008, the MDC claimed victory was stolen from it by Zanu-PF.
In the days leading to Wednesday's national election, Tsvangirai had become unusually bold and not shy to step out of the cocoon and take a pot-shot at the Africa Union Commission chairperson Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma for glossing over the shortcomings of the election preparations and not calling on the Zimbabwe Election Commission (ZEC) secretariat to resign over its "shenanigans" in managing the election.
'Misleading'
Tsvangirai claimed that Dlamini-Zuma's assessment of the Zimbabwe election was "misleading".
In addition, he accused the ZEC of working hand in glove with Mugabe's Zanu-PF to rig the election.
In between his public outbursts, Tsvangirai has however been able to draw large crowds at his rallies where the "change" and "Mugabe must go" mantra reached fever-pitch. The final MDC rally held in Harare on Monday, dubbed the "cross-over" rally, was estimated to have drawn a crowd of nearly 50 000 MDC supporters.
In response, Mugabe has dismissed his arch-rival Tsvangirai as a "cry baby" for running to outsiders for help over every disagreement, mainly the Southern African Development Community and the African Union. The state media also dug into Tsvangirai and made fun of him that he would concern himself with making babies should he win the election, instead of governing – in a veiled dig at Tsvangirai's string of sex scandals last year.
Political analyst Khanyile Mlotshwa based at Rhodes University said it was in Mugabe's interest to win in the first round of voting and avoid having the election spill into a run-off contest. The date for the run-off election is September 11, should the election go into second round of voting.
"If it goes to the second round, then all opposition parties will gang up against Mugabe and I don't see him winning. I also don't see him rigging the second round," said Mlotshwa.
"No one would believe that Mugabe can beat the combined effort of opposition parties in the country. For the first round, it looks like there is so much balance and no single party can get over 50% of the votes. That is just not possible. So a second round is likely and the end of Mugabe is upon us. If he is to have another life, he just has to steal the first round; otherwise he can't get 50% of the votes".
'Red card'
Obert Gutu, the former deputy minister of justice, legal and parliamentary affairs under the unity government, said Wednesday's election would finally see voters give Mugabe and Zanu-PF a red card after having reduced what was once the jewel of Africa into a hopeless and desperate basket case.
"Mugabe and his corrupt legion have ransacked and looted the country into becoming a small, impoverished economy, which now ranks lower than the economies of little Lesotho and Swaziland. This is the hallmark of Mugabeism", said Gutu.
"It has been a rollercoaster of kleptocracy and obscurantism; a cocktail of disastrous and toxic economic policies such as the notorious economic structural adjustment programme of the early 1990s to the lunatic and self-serving … so-called indigenisation and empowerment."
At an impromptu press conference held at State House on Tuesday, Mugabe said he was ready to give up power should he lose the election.
"If you go into a process and you enter into a competition; there are two outcomes, either win or lose, you can't be both", said Mugabe.
"If you lose then you must surrender to those who have won. If you win, those who lost must also surrender to you".
Mugabe also denied that he had the backing of the military, which he said had individuals who had lent support to him in their personal capacity and did not reflect the position of the entire military establishment.
"You are talking as if it was all of them. It was just one or two; they are not the army and not the authority".