Zimbabwe’s controversial Information Minister Jonathan Moyo has ”now been officially barred” from contesting the March legislative elections as a candidate of the ruling party, state dailies said on Thursday.
The Herald and its sister paper The Chronicle said Moyo ”will not stand on a Zanu-PF ticket in the forthcoming parliamentary elections after the seat was reserved for women candidates to punish those who took part” in an unsanctioned secret succession meeting last year.
The decision was reached after a marathon meeting on Wednesday between the party’s national chairperson John Nkomo and other senior regional officials.
The Chronicle said the party leadership said ”in no uncertain terms” that the decision to set aside the Tsholotsho seat for female candidates was ”to punish those who organised” the secret meeting, and in particular Moyo.
The unauthorised meeting was allegedly aimed at pushing a rival candidate to President Robert Mugabe’s choice for the post of vice president, which is seen as a stepping stone to the country’s top job after Mugabe retires in 2008.
The job was eventually given to Joyce Mujuru, a Cabinet minister and wife of a former army commander.
The Chronicle cited an unannamed source who attended Wednesday’s leadership meeting, where it was reportedly declared that if it meant the Tsholotsho seat would be lost to the opposition ”then let it go”.
Last week Moyo appealed against the ruling party’s decision to bar him from the March polls, saying it was a ”manifestly unfair” and ”unprocedural …11th hour pretext”.
Moyo argued that he successfully led the presidential election campaign in the rural constituency in 2002 and that he has been working actively in the country and area since 2000.
The Zanu-PF’s supreme decision inner Cabinet, the politburo, is on Thursday expected to meet to finalise the list of aspirants to take part in the weekend party primary elections where members will select their favourite candidates for the March polls.
The run-up to the primary polls has been hit by unprecedented protests by party supporters accusing their leadership of imposing candidates.
A Zanu-PF elections team has spent much of this week attending to complaints from party supporters and disqualified candidates unhappy with the pre-poll selection procedures in their local regions. – Sapa-AFP