Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. I'm your host, Jason Palmer.

Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

In Lahite on Hawaii's island of Maui, people are only just starting to count the costs

of this month's devastating fires. Our correspondent visits and finds people wrestling with

three emotions, shock, devastation, and anger. And in Britain we chart the rise of a curious

species, the self-pitying member of parliament. The pay is bad, the hours long, bootlicking

chumps rise through the ranks. Cheer up, our columnist says, there is simply no finer,

more consequential job.

The polls are open in Zimbabwe this morning and as the country has geared up for a general election,

incumbent President Emerson Manon-Gagua and his ZanoPF party have been busy.

The campaign trail has been packed with mass rallies, thousands of people seemingly willing

to lend their voices to the government's cause. Or maybe not, locals in Harare, Zimbabwe's capital

have complained of being forced to attend. Nearby, market traders risked losing their licenses

if they didn't and state-owned buses were used to bring voters in from hundreds of miles away.

For many of Zimbabwe's voters, today will be little more than a democratic charade,

orchestrated by a ruling party whose allegiances are shifting away from the West.

polls have already opened in Zimbabwe for the general election and the mood is fairly

despondent. John McDermott is the economist's chief Africa correspondent.

That's because while most Zimbabrians feel the country is going in the wrong direction,

analysts still expect Emerson Manon-Gagua, the 80-year-old president, to win re-election

because his ruling party, ZanoPF, is tilting the playing field once again in an unfair direction.

And you say that people are unhappy with the direction of the country? What is that direction?

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