HARARE, ZIMBABWE — Zimbabwe's economy is so destitute that just the cost of running Saturday's elections will lurch the nation toward bankruptcy.
Once a regional economic powerhouse and food exporter, Zimbabwe now relies on humanitarian food aid. Its towns and rural roads are lined with children in threadbare rags, or men walking miles, some of them barefoot.
With inflation running at 100,000%, President Robert Mugabe recently announced that prices would remain fixed at February levels. But after printing trillions of Zimbabwean dollars to fund a 700% pay raise for civil servants and gifts of cars and tractors to rural chiefs, the government has been unable to deliver on that promise. Independent economists say inflation has now risen to 200,000% and predict it could rise to a dizzying 500,000% by May.
Even just staffing the 9,000 polling booths puts a severe strain on government finances.
Mugabe's desperate election spending spree could be his last, analysts predict. The financial implosion could be the beginning of the end for the 84-year-old president, even if he clings to power in Saturday's presidential and parliamentary elections.
"This is yet to come crashing down on us. It's a tsunami . . . waiting to crash down in the form of massively high inflationary pressures," said independent economist John Robertson.
A decade ago, the money pumping through Zimbabwe's economy was worth $350 billion. Now the nation's money supply amounts to just $98 million, according to Robertson. "That amount of money is not enough for any important project for the country. If you were to build a shopping center, that would not be enough to finish the job," he said.
The national debt, meanwhile, stood at 1.4 quadrillion (thousands of trillions) Zimbabwean dollars, up from 22 trillion in January.
Tony Hawkins, another independent economist, predicted that Zimbabwe would need an international rescue package within weeks or months.
"Mugabe, if he wins, would not be around for very long because the economy will force him out," Hawkins said. "Mugabe is unable to negotiate that kind of package. The price of the rescue package will be for him to step down."
Many have predicted Mugabe's downfall as the country lurched into chaos in recent years, but he has proved a wily political survivor who delights in taunting and insulting rivals.
