Zimbabwe’s long-ruling President Robert Mugabe said in an interview on Sunday that he intends to stand in the country’s next presidential elections if they are held as scheduled in 2008.
”If the party says so, I will stand,” the Southern Times, co-published by New Era in Windhoek and Zimbabwe Newspapers in Harare, quoted Mugabe as saying.
The 83-year-old Mugabe had originally indicated he would step down when his term expires next year, 28 years after assuming power with Zimbabwe’s independence from Britain in 1980.
Local representatives from Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party passed resolutions in December last year to extend his rule by two more years to allow the concurrent holding of presidential and parliamentary polls, but the move has still to be approved by the party’s powerful central committee and parliament.
”It [harmonisation] has not been decided,” Mugabe told the Southern Times.
”These are just ideas that found expression in individual resolutions from provinces and we have not even said we will [do] this or that.”
The country’s main opposition has vowed to fight plans to extend Mugabe’s rule, saying with four-digit inflation and most of the population living below the poverty threshold, the country cannot afford any more of Mugabe’s term. — AFP
