AT A few minutes past 6pm on August 3rd Robert Mugabe was declared president of Zimbabwe, claiming 61% of the 3.5m votes cast in elections held on July 31st. His main rival, Morgan Tsvangirai, picked up 34%; the rest was shared between three fringe candidates. The man Nelson Mandela mockingly called Comrade Bob, who has already ruled Zimbabwe for 33 years, had clinched yet another election victory. His Zanu-PF party secured a similarly large majority in parliament. The opposition cried foul and refused to concede defeat. Mr Mugabe tallied a million more votes than he garnered in the first round of the previous presidential election in March 2008. Then he trailed Mr Tsvangirai, who was bludgeoned into pulling out of the subsequent run-off. This time there was little violence. But the margin of victory still makes the result hard to credit for observers and hard to stomach for many ordinary Zimbabweans. Mr Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) claims that Mr Mugabe’s win was the result of a careful conditioning of the electoral roll, so that MDC supporters were prevented from voting, as well as the use of tactics such as “assisted voting” to swell the Zanu-PF vote in rural areas. It will be a case study for decades to come in how to rig an election, says an awed diplomat. “This fraudulent and stolen election has plunged Zimbabwe into a constitutional, political and economic crisis,” declared Mr Tsvangirai at a press conference at his official residence in Highlands, a posh suburb of Harare, an hour or so before the final results were announced. Flanked by party bigwigs, he dismissed rumours that he had been offered the consolation of cabinet job. In any case the MDC would not legitimise the elections by accepting posts in a Mugabe-led government, he said. The party “totally rejects” the poll results. “The MDC won this election.”

It certainly smells bad to many in the West. William Hague, Britain’s foreign secretary, said in a statement that the many reported irregularities “call into serious question the credibility of the election”. Washington was blunter. “The United States does not believe that the results announced today represent a credible expression of the will of the Zimbabwean people,” said the secretary of state, John Kerry.

But Mr Tsvangirai's options for overturning the results seem limited. His first recourse is to Zimbabwe’s courts, but they are sympathetic to Mr Mugabe. His next hope is that the Southern African Development Community, a regional body, and the African Union will judge that the elections were not credible, and pressure Mr Mugabe into a fairer re-run. The odds on that are also quite long. Mr Tsvangirai did not reveal his Plan C (if indeed he has one) should the first two gambits fail. “If I had a game plan, I wouldn’t say it here,” he said unconvincingly.

The MDC had judged it could win even a flawed election. But Mr Tsvangirai insisted he did not regret contesting it before key reforms had been put in place and an electoral roll produced for inspection and correction. Had he been naive in joining a coalition with Zanu-PF after the disputed 2008 elections? No, he said. That was necessary to rescue Zimbabwe from a national crisis. But now another looms.