There is one obvious reason for election authorities in Zimbabwe to have sat on the results from Saturday's presidential election. It is that President Robert Mugabe is unhappy with the outcome.

We hope he is exceedingly unhappy. Mugabe has been in power for 28 years, during which time Zimbabwe's economy has shrunk by 40 percent.

His wastepaper dollar is currently quoted at U.S. $0.00003385, which suggests that it would take at least a million Zim dollars to buy a tank of gas. According to Freedom House, the New York human rights group, in 2007 roughly 80 percent of workers in Zimbabwe were out of work.

There is one good thing about Mugabe: He has agreed to an election with real opponents.

However, the election has not been clean. The Mugabe government has broken up rallies and arrested opposition activists. It controls the press.

Human Rights Watch reports that in February, a group of teachers who were passing out political fliers for trade-union leader Morgan Tsvangirai were taken to a police station and beaten with pieces of furniture and iron bars.

Even so, at press time, the electoral commission in Mugabe's government is reporting that Tsvangirai's party, the Movement for Democratic Change, had won 72 seats in parliament to the Mugabe party's 68, with results still to come for another 70 seats.

A private group called the Zimbabwe Election Support Network said its own samples showed Tsvangirai with 49 percent of the vote, Mugabe with 42 percent and a third candidate with the rest.

If Mugabe now claims victory, the world will not believe it.