This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, July 1st, 2008. I'm Caleb Brown. It is a

discredited election but one that gave Robert Mugabe another term in office in Zimbabwe.

Marion Tupi, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute's Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity,

says the Zimbabwean economy may leave Robert Mugabe in a more vulnerable position than ever before.

Well, it's very easy for him to appear to be holding all the cards because he's got the guns and he's got an opposition movement in Zimbabwe which is determined to refrain from using violence in order to come to power.

So you've got an unfortunate situation here whereby the international community is obviously not prepared to intervene militarily.

Domestically there is a situation where the opposition is not prepared to take up arms

against Mugabe and Mugabe is the only one who is prepared to shed blood in order to stay in power.

And so as a consequence, there is very little that anyone can do aside from trying to isolate the man and try to delegitimize

his hold on power.

I think that in the medium to long run the real enemy of Mugabe will be the economy.

The economy is in a tailspin. You have 80% unemployment, you have inflation which is reaching almost 3 million percent per month.

You have a complete collapse of public services and really the only people who retain

Salaries that they can live off are the members of the military and of the police, which is obviously how Mugabe wants to keep it because without the support of the military and of the police, there is just no way that he can keep in office.

And as the economy shrinks and as the international community is not prepared to supply more aid to Mugabe,

and as the private sector suffers, and as a consequence there isn't money generated by the domestic economy,

as a consequence... isn't money generated by the domestic economy.

As a consequence, the pool of money that Mugabe has left in order to pay his army and the military

is constantly declining and soon he will run out of the financial resources to keep the military

and the police on his side.

Now African governments, especially those immediately surrounding Zimbabwe have been for many years reluctant to be very

bold in making any pronouncements about his ineffective leadership but just this

...