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Zanu-PF readies for 'bitter war'
05/05/2008 12:48 - (SA)
Harare - Zimbabwe's opposition on Monday mulled whether to contest a presidential election run-off after winning the first round as veteran leader Robert Mugabe's camp began gearing up for the ballot.
Sources in the opposition Movement for Democratic Change had indicated party leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who fell just short of the overall majority needed to topple Mugabe in the first round, would make an announcement on Monday.
However his spokesperson said there were no plans for Tsvangirai, currently based in South Africa, to declare his intentions as the party had still to make a formal decision.
"We are still putting things together and when we are ready, we will get the press informed," George Sibotshiwe told AFP.
Tsvnagirai has previously said he sees no need for a second round run-off, convinced he won more than 50% in polling on March 29.
However results from the Zimbabwe electoral commission on Friday, released nearly five weeks after polling day, gave him only 47.9% while Mugabe was said to have won 43.2%.
While maintaining the electoral commission is biased in favour of Mugabe, the MDC is also aware any boycott would hand the 84-year-old - who has ruled the ex-British colony since independence in 1980 - another six-year term.
'We will beat Mugabe hands down'
"We are saying as far as we are concerned we won and a run-off is not necessary," MDC spokesperson Nelson Chamisa told AFP.
"But in the unlikely even that ZEC convinces us that a run-off is necessary, any time any hour we will beat Mugabe hands down."
The run-off should in theory be held within three weeks of the declaration of results but the commission has still to set a date.
Its secretary, Dominico Chidhakuza, played down the prospects of an imminent announcement of a date for the run-off, saying the commission had yet to discuss the issue.
"We are yet to meet. I can't give a date right now because there are issues we are still to discuss," Chidhakuza told AFP.
Many observers believe that Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party, still reeling from their loss of control in parliament in simultaneous legislative elections, are playing for time.
Mugabe's former information minister Jonathan Moyo, now an independent lawmaker, said the authorities were likely to try and delay any run-off by over a month.
'They are mourning...'
"I suppose they are still trying to come to terms with the fact that they have lost parliament, and they stand to lose the presidency and they have not yet done enough to avoid that loss," Moyo told AFP.
"They are mourning, so they want 40 days and 40 nights."
The MDC's fear is that Mugabe and his supporters will use the time to scare voters into backing the president.
Growing incidents of violence, which the opposition says has left 20 of its supporters dead, have led Western governments to demand observers are sent into monitor the second round.
Mugabe himself has made no comment since the results were announced but his party says he is ready for the run-off.
In an apparent vote-winning exercise, his wife Grace took part in a ceremony over the weekend to donate clothes, blankets to alleged victims of MDC violence at Chiendambuya, around 160km east of the capital.
"Zanu-PF has been voted into power since 1980, if it had wanted to rig elections, it would have done that a long time ago," she said in a speech.
Information Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu meanwhile was quoted on state radio as saying Zanu-PF has started mobilising resources for a run-off which he described not as "an ordinary run-off" but a "bitter war" between Zanu-PF and Western forces represented by the MDC.
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