COMMENT | Dictators share one common trait: almost always, they overstay their welcome.

Having governed Zimbabwe for close to 37 years, often running it into the ground, the career of Robert Mugabe should have long been over.

Instead, he tried to manoeuvre to stay on, indeed, to hand over the reins of power to his wife Grace Mugabe, aka “Gucci Grace” due to her penchant for expensive handbags and accessories. Now it is over for Mugabe and Grace.

Even the members of Zanu-PF, which Mugabe co-founded to push his country into independence, voted the 93-year-old out on Sunday and appointed Emmerson Mnangagwa, the former vice-president who was fired by Mugabe earlier this month and fled Zimbabwe, as their new leader.

The party members gave importance to the party rather than Mugabe, party above individual, unlike back home in Malaysia where despite the many alleged multi-billion dollar scandals, Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak stays as Umno president.

Najib is allegedly close to derailing Malaysia too. Thus what is happening in Zimbabwe carries salient lessons in an electoral democracy like Malaysia that is given to serious manipulation.

Not surprisingly, even African leaders who appeared at the Woodrow Wilson Center in the US are known to have used Malaysia as the personification of endemic "corruption"...