A senior Zimbabwean army official has publicly urged soldiers to vote for President Robert Mugabe in next month’s presidential election run-off, a state daily reported on Saturday.
“The Constitution says the country should be protected by voting and in the June 27 presidential election run-off, pitting our defence chief comrade Robert Mugabe [against] Morgan Tsvangirai of the MDC [Movement for Democratic Change], we should, therefore, stand behind our commander-in-chief,” Major General Martin Chedondo, the Zimbabwe army’s chief of staff, was quoted as saying by the government mouthpiece Herald.
“Soldiers are not apolitical. Only mercenaries are apolitical. We have signed and agreed to fight and protect the ruling party’s principles of defending the revolution.
“If you have other thoughts, then you should remove that uniform. The willingness to serve the country should be there and should burn forever so that the country does not slip away.”
Chedondo said soldiers would be deployed to quell post-election violence in some parts of the country.
“You are going to be given duties to protect parents who are being stabbed, axed and whose houses have been burnt by suspected MDC supporters so that we stamp out politically motivated violence,” Chedondo told soldiers at an army shooting competition on the outskirts of the capital, Harare.
Zimbabwe will go to the polls on June 27 in a second-round presidential election after none of the four presidential candidates in the March 29 vote did well enough to avoid a run-off.
The March 29 general elections saw Mugabe’s Zanu lose its majority in Parliament for the first time since independence 28 years ago.
Violence flared mainly in rural areas, with the opposition claiming at least 50 of its supporters have been killed, thousands displaced and hundreds injured in attacks by ruling party militants and people in army uniform.
The Zimbabwe national army has denied involvement in attacks on the opposition.
The ruling party accuses the MDC of attacking it supporters and burning their property.
Chedondo’s call echoes vows by the country’s prisons and police chiefs that they would not allow the country to be ruled by “puppets.”
Mugabe often refers to Tsvangirai as a stooge of former colonial master, Britain.
State of disrepair
Meanwhile, Tsvangirai on Friday launched a scathing attack on Mugabe’s rule, saying he had transformed a country rich in natural resources into a “state of despair”.
In a self-styled state of the nation address to lawmakers from his MDC, Tsvangirai also vowed there would be no amnesty for perpetrators of political violence if he takes power from Mugabe at the run-off election.
“The state of our nation is a state of despair,” said Tsvangirai, who is looking to end Mugabe’s 28-year rule at the ballot box.
“We have the world’s highest inflation rate, 80% unemployment, an education sector that has plummeted from one of the best to one of the worst.”
Tsvangirai said there could be no justification for the mess in a country that was regarded as a post-colonial role model in the first decade and a half after independence from Britain in 1980.
“We are a rich country with natural resources. We have the resources to attract foreign investors,” said Tsvangirai.
Zimbabwe’s economy has been in meltdown since the start of the decade, when Mugabe embarked on a controversial land-reform programme that saw thousands of white-owned farms expropriated by the state. — AFP