But that's all they have in common. Abbas is widely regarded as a dignified statesman and his refusal to accept the election result hailed as the action of a democrat.

In contrast, Mugabe's refusal to accept the result is everywhere denounced as typical behaviour from a vicious dictator with whom no decent democrat could do business.

Abbas is the leader of the Fatah party in Palestine. Just over two years ago, in January 2006, Fatah faced its rival Hamas in a general election. Readers might recall the nervous reports of high hopes and fraught tension as polling day approached.

Conditions were hardly conducive. The two patches of Palestine where voting was permitted and possible, the West Bank and Gaza, were hemmed in and regularly invaded by the Israeli Defence Forces.

In the West Bank, heavily-armed illegal immigrants continued to occupy and expand enclaves built on land seized by force from local people.

It seemed unlikely that an election conducted in these circumstances could pass off peacefully.

Still, all the major outside players — the UN, the US, the EU, Russia — had urged the parties along the democratic road. President Bush had declared in his second inaugural address a year earlier that "the promotion of democracy" was the only way forward. He explicitly called on Palestinians "to elect new leaders ... to build a practicing democracy" .

Turnout was 74.6% — compared to 61.4% in the UK general election the previous year. Some voters queued for hours at checkpoints to reach polling stations.

A team of observers from the Washington-based National Democratic Institute, headed by former US President Jimmy Carter, found no evidence of intimidation or fraud. Carter described the proceedings as "completely honest, completely fair, completely safe and without violence."

A 70-strong group of monitors from the European Parliament, including 27 MEPs, delivered a written report describing the poll as 'fair,' 'open' and 'well-administered'. Their chairman, Edward McMillan-Scott, Conservative member for Yorkshire and Humberside, greeted the election as "a model for the wider Arab region".

This, surely, was a glowing triumph for the democratic process, an inspiration for all the wretched of the region who groaned under oppression and yearned for the right to chose their own leaders.

Hamas won, taking 74 sets to Fatah's 45. No one from any party or interest group inside or outside Palestine has since been able to claim that this was other than an accurate reflection of the freely-expressed wishes of the people.

The reaction of the Bush administration was within 24 hours to order its diplomats to have no dealings with Hamas. The European Union followed suit, and suspended payment of hundreds of millions of pounds in desperately needed aid. Tony Blair promised "further measures" if Hamas didn't ditch the policies which the people had supported and adopt the policies which the people had rejected.

Hamas had run on a platform of refusing to recognise the legitimacy of the Israeli state until Israel withdrew to its 1967 borders (the formal position of the UN) and Palestinians who'd been ethnically cleansed from their homeland had been given the right to return to their homes. But these were not the policies the major powers would have preferred the people to support.

"They have chosen the wrong party," observed Bob Fisk wryly. " God damn democracy."

Khalid Mish'al, head of Hamas' political bureau, summed it up: "The day Hamas won the Palestinian democratic elections the world's leading democracies failed the test of democracy. Rather than recognise the legitimacy of Hamas as a freely elected representative of the Palestinian people, seize the opportunity created by the result to support the development of good governance in Palestine and search for a means of ending the bloodshed, the US and EU threatened the Palestinian people with collective punishment for exercising their right to choose their parliamentary representatives."

It's not only governments in the West, with the acquiescence of others (Russia, China, Japan) who continue to fail the test of democracy. Nobody reading the mainstream press or watching television news programmes today would gather that Hamas is, whether we like it or not, the legitimate government of Palestine.

The BBC regularly refers to Hamas having 'seized control of' Gaza. Tony Blair, in his ludicrous new role as 'Middle East envoy', refuses even to speak with Hamas representatives. Respected commentators calmly speculate whether force should be used to suppress the party — and hardly anybody blinks in disbelief. Politicians, analysts, editorialists, cricket administrators, Uncle Tom Cobley, Bob Geldof etc., compete with one another as to which can most passionately denounce the refusal of Mugabe to accept the democratically-expressed wishes of the people.

Sometimes you have to wonder whether you are watching a news programme or guesting at the Mad Hatter's Tea Party. Meanwhile, Zimbabwe continues to suffer, Palestine continues to simmer, and Bush and Blair continue to babble about democracy.