/ 5 January 2000

MUGABE BACKTRACKS ON ELECTION DATE

ZIMBABWE’s parliamentary elections are still scheduled for March and will not be postponed to June as a government minister intimated last month, President Robert Mugabe said on Tuesday night. ”Elections will be held in March. We have not as government made a decision to postpone elections,” the official Herald newspaper quoted Mugabe as saying. Government earlier said the elections had been moved to June so that they could be conducted under a new constitution and to give time for a new voter registration exercise. Zimbabwe expects to hold a referendum next month on a draft constitution produced by a 400-member government-appointed commission.