Zimbabwe election: Tsvangirai has paid dearly for compromising, but has never shirked his duty When I asked him how coalition government was going, he sounded more upbeat than David Cameron and Nick Clegg are normally. "Coalitions are not the best arrangement in the world, but they are undertaken by a politician in order to pass through a certain phase," he told me. I think to a large extent we have delivered. Mr Mugabe, he added, was at least "polite and respectful" during cabinet meetings, even if he did then go off and issue entirely different instructions to his own camp afterwards. Yet Mr Tsvangirai's generosity towards the Zanu-PF leader was borne, perhaps, of an expectation that history was on his side, and that it was only a question of waiting until the next elections before Zimbabwe would finally dump Mr Mugabe. The rationale was that Mr Mugabe's appalling record over the three previous decades was now all but certain to catch up with him. And while he might have got away with election fixing in 2008, it would surely be harder to repeat it in 2013, with the outside world watching more closely than ever. There was also a good chance, anyway, that Mr Mugabe's ailing health would finish him off well before any ballot. With election day now just three days away, though, neither of those scenarios look likely. Not only is Mr Mugabe still alive and kicking, he is actually doing better in the polls than Mr Tsvangirai. Part of that is down to the MDC's own poor PR efforts, which have failed to take sufficient credit for steering the country away from economic collapse, and essentially letting Mr Mugabe off the hook. But Mr Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change party has also had problems of its own. A number of MDC politicians have become mired in the kind of corruption scandals that so often engulf their Zanu-PF counterparts. Meanwhile, Mr Tsvangirai's liaisons with various different women have been a gift to Zanu-PF, allowing them to paint him as an indecisive philanderer who cannot even decide which lady he wishes to wed, never mind what policies the country should follow. That, as much than anything else, may cost him at the polls, making him the Zimbabwean answer to Bill Clinton. For many of Mr Tsvangirai's supporters, electoral defeat on Wednesday will be confirmation that it was a bad idea to enter coalition politics all along. But those who might wish to rewrite history now should bear in mind what the alternative might have been. Were Mr Tsvangirai to have aloofly stayed out of government, his reputation today might be more intact, but Zimbabwe would have remained entirely in Zanu-PF's inept stewardship, with potentially disastrous consequences. That he chose to get his hands dirty perhaps says more about him than whatever verdict is passed on him on Wednesday.