and one which allowed Parliament to appoint a new president pending elections if the incumbent (i.e. Mugabe) left office for any reason. Mbeki assured the MDC that the quid quo pro would be an easing of repressive laws affecting elections. When Mugabe never delivered on this undertaking, Mbeki did nothing. Having won a two thirds majority in parliament in 2005, both Mbeki and Mugabe believed that Mugabe could secure a victory in the March 2008 elections without engaging in the violence which had characterized the 2000 and 2002 elections or fully utilising the unrepealed and repressive laws which ought to have been amended as part of the quid quo pro. Both were mistaken. Although the March 2008 “harmonized” elections (where the Presidential, Senate, House of Assembly and Local Government elections were held simultaneously) were a long way from fair (due the ZANU PF’s manipulation of the voters’ roll, control over the electronic and printed media and use of state resources, particularly food handouts, for party political purposes), they were certainly the most free elections since the crisis began. The combined MDCs took 109 of 210 House of Assembly seats against ZANU PF’s 97. The elected seats in the Senate split 50:50. Although the results of all elections were known within 48 hours of the poll, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC), eked out the results and announced them as if dealing a pack of cards, with one seat declared won by the MDC, the next by ZANU PF. The results of the presidential election, however, were withheld. The obvious reason was that Mugabe had lost the poll. The Zambian president, as then chair of SADC, convened an emergency summit to discuss the refusal of ZEC to declare the presidential result. Mbeki swung into action to rescue Mugabe from his defeat. He travelled to Zimbabwe on the way to the emergency summit, meeting Mugabe with the usual hugging and hand holding. After a short meeting with Mugabe, Mbeki addressed reporters on the failure to release the results of the presidential poll, stating that the delay was part of the “normal electoral process in terms of the law of Zimbabwe”, when it clearly was not, and infamously stated that he would not describe the situation “as a crisis”. Mugabe decided that it would be politic not to attend the emergency SADC meeting. However, his input was reportedly delivered by Mbeki, apparently causing Zambia president Levy Mwanawasa to remark that “If Robert Mugabe has anything to say to me as chairperson, then he can talk to me himself.” He added that Mbeki was creating the impression that he was becoming “Mugabe's messenger”. In addition, Mbeki sought to prevent Tsvangirai from addressing the SADC meeting, but was overruled by Mwanawasa. When the results of the presidential poll were finally released in May, the poll gave 1 195 562 votes (47.9%) to Morgan Tsvangirai, 1 079 730 votes (43.2%) to Robert Mugabe, 207 470 votes (8.3%) to Simba Makoni and 14 503 votes (0.6%) to Langton Towungana. The lengthy delay in releasing the results lent credence to the notion that the results had been manipulated to reduce Tsvangirai’s poll to below the 50% plus one necessary to prevent a run off. The run off itself, which should have been held “within 21 days of the previous election”, was delayed by ZEC to 27th June, 2008. Mugabe used the hiatus to