Skip to main content

ZIMBABWE: Peaceful' Zimbabwe election in 4-5 months: president






Emmerson Mnangagwa indicated he wants to resolve disputes with the West and open Zimbabwe up to foreign investment

Zimbabwe will hold elections in four or five months, the new president announced on Thursday, a sign the country ruled for decades by autocratic leader Robert Mugabe is on the path towards true democracy.
However, the announcement came as the main opposition party accused President Emmerson Mnangagwa's government of secretly deploying thousands of soldiers in rural areas to help sway the election in his favour.
The elections will be the first not involving Mugabe since Zimbabwe's independence from Britain in 1980. Voting for the presidency, parliament, and local government will be peaceful, Mnangagwa said.
"Zimbabwe is going for elections in four to five months' time and we have to preach peace, peace and peace because we know it is good for us and we have no doubt that we will have peaceful elections," Mnangagwa was quoted as saying by the official Herald newspaper during an official trip to Mozambique.
"The MDC is ... deeply concerned by the continued militarisation of villages around the country. We have solid and incontrovertible evidence pointing to the fact that thousands of army officers in civilian attire have been deployed into the countryside for the purposes of carrying out clandestine political campaigns on behalf of ZANU-PF," a MDC statement said.
Under the constitution, Zimbabwe should hold elections between July 22 and August 22, but parliament can choose to dissolve itself, triggering an earlier vote. ZANU-PF holds a two-thirds majority in parliament.
Western countries imposed harsh sanctions on Zimbabwe over land seizures from white farmers and alleged vote-rigging under Mugabe.
Little investment in agriculture - the backbone of the economy - has been made over the past two decades because of disputes over compensation between former white farmers and the government.
Resolving the land issue could unlock foreign investment in agriculture and help mend ties between Harare and the West.

Source: Aljazeera 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ex-VP Mujuru 'was hit on the cheek with a stone by Zanu-PF activist': Spokesperson

Harare - A Zimbabwean opposition leader and her entourage were Thursday attacked with stones by suspected ruling party activists in Harare, her party said. Joice Mujuru, a former vice president of the country who is now leader of the National People's Party (NPP), and her supporters were pelted while on the campaign trail. Zimbabwe is due to hold general elections before July - the first polls since independence hero Robert Mugabe was ousted after 37 years in power. Mujuru is one of the prominent contenders. Mujuru was hit on the cheek with a stone and later addressed a rally in the working class suburb of Glen Norah after she received medical treatment, her spokesperson said. Mujuru "was going to address a rally ...she passed through a shopping centre and when people realised it was her, they came out of the shops to cheer her", Jeffryson Chitando told AFP. "She got out of her car and greeted the people, and that is when Zanu-PF (activists) started thro...
Post a Comment
Read more

Kenya gov't arrests another Odinga ally, AU 'ready to help

Government in Kenya has arrested Miguna Miguna, the other legislator that actively participated in the illegal ‘swearing in’ ceremony of opposition leader Raila Odinga. The self-styled National Resistance Movement ( NRM ) General Miguna Miguna was arrested on Friday morning, shortly after he raised the alarm on a police raid at his home. The National Resistance Movement is the resistance wing of the opposition National Super Alliance Coalition ( NASA ). The Director of Criminal Investigations George Kinoti confirmed that he was arrested for administering an illegal oath and being a member of  NRM , an organisational that has been declared ‘criminal’. “He publicly declared that he is the general of  NRM , which is already declared a proscribed group. By the time he declared publicly, there was a gazette notice by the minister. How can we let it go? We are law enforcers,” said Kinoti. Kinoti added that Miguna told ‘people to burn portraits of a democratically elec...
Post a Comment
Read more

NIGERIA: Nigeria flying citizens from Libya amid 'endemic' abuse

Nigeria  is flying out thousands of its citizens from  Libya  who face grave abuses such as rape and slavery as they attempt to reach Europe through the war-torn North African nation. Large numbers of Nigerians have been trapped in Libya where they were trying to cross to Italy by sea, but were stopped by local armed factions and the Libyan coastguard. Nigerian officials on a fact-finding mission to Libya expressed shock  at what they saw and heard from victims. "They talked about various abuse - systematic, endemic, and exploitation of all kinds," said Nigeria's Foreign Affairs Minister Geoffrey Onyeama. "There were obviously interests that wanted to keep as many of them there as possible because they were commodities." Al Jazeera's Ahmed Idris, reporting from the Libyan capital Tripoli, said Nigerians there told of abuses such as slavery, rape, imprisonment, and torture. "These happened either in the hands of the authorities or people-smugg...
Post a Comment
Read more