Across the road, hundreds of people queued for maize outside OK Bazaars. Not far away, Zanu-PF’s headquarters on Rotten Row looked quiet.An hour later, Mr Tsvangirai flopped into a wire chair on the porch of his modest cream-coloured bungalow in the suburb of Avondale, no different from the others but for dark-suited FBI-types prowling outside He looked calm.”It’s my personality,” he said. “But when one goes into an experience like this, you have to develop a single-minded attitude, focusing on the objective rather than the distractions. The objectives of democracy, economic recovery and improving the lives of Zimbabweans are totally motivating to me.”That personality, said by some colleagues to be nice but bordering on naive, landed Mr Tsvangirai in trouble just two weeks before this weekend’s election.

He and two other MDC leaders face charges of treason over their role in an alleged plot, involving a shady Canadian political consultancy, to assassinate Mr Mugabe, which they vehemently deny.The MDC claims that the consultancy, which turned out to be working for Mr Mugabe, set them up. But Mr Tsvangirai says he will not stop trusting people or harden his character were he, against dreadful odds, to win the election.”I will not be creating a Morgan Tsvangirai personality other than the one I enjoy and am confident about. But from now on, people must earn my trust,” he said.There are several scenarios facing Mr Tsvangirai on the eve of the most important election in the country’s history since independence from Britain in 1980. One is a clear victory that will make it difficult for Mr Mugabe and his security forces to reject the result, despite recent threats of a military coup if Mr Mugabe were to lose.If that happens, he says, he will set about prioritising food relief to starving citizens, restoring the rule of law, implementing structured land reform, and rescuing an economy in spiralling decline – it has shrunk 30 per cent in two years – to create jobs and improve people’s plummeting standards of living.More worrying for him is the most likely scenario: what he calls a “stolen victory” by Mr Mugabe. In this case, he says, the MDC has two options: the people and the courts. By working through the courts to challenge Zanu-PF electoral rigging, he says, the party has carefully laid the foundation for post-election legal challenges. More directly, it will rely on popular sentiment to challenge Mr Mugabe’s government.

“Unlike Zanu-PF, we will have a non-violent approach to a stolen victory,” he said. The leader of the Republic of the Congo, Denis Sassou-Nguesso, has been virtually assured victory in tomorrow’s presidential election by the decision of his main challenger to withdraw from the race. Andre Milongo said yesterday that he was pulling out because “those who are organising the election do not want openness”.. Biocompatibles, which makes tiny balloons used to prop open furred arteries, suspended trials of its most exciting new product after finding it does not work. Batimastat was planned as the company’s first product launch in the US, so its programme in the world’s biggest drug market is now six months behind schedule. Even before yesterday’s failure, analysts had been increasingly sceptical over the product’s worth. Analysts said the Batimastat stent would need to show outstanding efficacy if it was to compete with a rival from Johnson & Johnson, which reduced cases of restenosis to less than 3 per cent.British Biotech shares fell 2p to 12.75p.