Conflicting messages emerged on Friday from Zimbabwe’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) as the country’s June 27 run-off presidential poll drew closer amid mounting violence and a court ruling to keep the MDC’s number-two leader behind bars for the vote.
Innocent Gonese, the MDC’s secretary for legal affairs, said the party would press ahead with its election campaign.
”The people have been subjected to violence and intimidation which are so blatant and they are disappointed that we are not having access to the electorate,” he said. ”People are saying despite all that we should not withdraw, and we also believe withdrawing will not solve anything.”
Opposition presidential candidate Morgan Tsvangirai on Friday issued a message to supporters, urging them to vote to end President Robert Mugabe’s ”evil” regime. ”If we fall into despair or disarray, my friends, the regime will have succeeded in its evil machinations to divide and discourage us,” he said in the message.
Tsvangirai is seeking to topple Mugabe’s 28-year rule in the June 27 run-off election.
However, another MDC spokesperson said Tsvangirai was considering whether to pull out of the run-off election due to fears it would be a charade.
”There is a huge avalanche of calls and pressure from supporters across the country, especially in the rural areas, not to accept to be participants in this charade,” Nelson Chamisa told Reuters. He said the MDC would decide on Monday whether to contest the poll.
Biti still in prison
The opposition’s comments came as a court refused to dismiss subversion and vote-rigging charges against their party’s number two, Tendai Biti, who faces a possible death sentence if convicted.
The magistrate ordered Biti held in prison until at least July 7 — a date beyond the run-off vote. He could, however, still be granted bail, with the Attorney General set to announce a decision on that issue later on Friday.
Biti, secretary general of the MDC, was arrested on June 12 minutes after arriving back in Zimbabwe following a long stay in South Africa. He has been held in prison since then and was officially charged on Thursday.
A harsh critic of Mugabe, Biti faces a total of four charges including subverting the government, election rigging and ”projecting the president as an evil man”.
The opposition has called the case against him part of a campaign of harassment and intimidation ahead of the run-off, claiming that about 70 of its supporters have been killed since the March 29 first-round vote.
Tsvangirai has faced major obstacles in seeking to campaign for the run-off, with police barring rallies and detaining him five times.
Mugabe has said he is ready to fight to keep the opposition from coming to power, and state media reported on Friday that he has warned he will not leave office until land is returned to the majority black population.
”Once I am sure this legacy [of returning land to the black population] is truly in your hands, people are empowered … then I can say, ‘Aha, the work is done,”’ Mugabe said in the Herald newspaper.
He repeated earlier statements about veterans of the 1970s liberation war. ”The war veterans came to me and said, ‘President, we can never accept that our country, which we won through the barrel of a gun, be taken merely by an ”x” made by a ballpoint pen.””
Mugabe, who has ruled since independence in 1980, embarked on a chaotic land-reform programme at the turn of the decade that saw about 4 000 white-owned farms expropriated by the state.
He has repeatedly portrayed Tsvangirai as a stooge of former colonial power Britain and returned to that theme in the report published in the government mouthpiece. ”What kind of people would we be to say the country should return into the hands of the British? We would reduce ourselves to be the laughing stock of the whole of Africa.”
EU criticism
Conditions ahead of the run-off have drawn sharp international criticism, and the European Union said on Friday it was ready to take further action against those behind political violence in Zimbabwe.
”The European Council reiterates its readiness to take additional measures against those responsible for violence,” the bloc said, implicitly threatening further sanctions against Mugabe’s regime.
The European Commission, the EU’s executive, is the biggest aid donor to Zimbabwe, providing €90,7-million last year in humanitarian assistance and other support to its population.
In June 2007, the EU strengthened its 2002 sanctions slapped on Mugabe’s regime, citing repression of the opposition and repeated human rights violations.
Critics put much of the blame for the country’s economic crisis on Mugabe’s land-reform programme, saying it saw some of the country’s most productive farms being handed to people with no previous farming experience or ruling party cronies.
Once seen as a potential regional breadbasket, the country’s economy is now in freefall with the world’s highest inflation rate and major food shortages. — AFP, Reuters