Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe will form a new government soon but he says the main opposition MDC does not want to join the new administration, state media reported on Wednesday.
”We shall soon be setting up a government. The MDC does not want to come in apparently,” state-owned newspaper the Herald quoted Mugabe as telling government officials on Tuesday after opening Parliament.
Mugabe, who was booed and jeered by opposition members when he opened the assembly, has said he is still hopeful for agreement to be reached in post-election power-sharing talks with Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC aimed at ending a political crisis.
The talks were still talking place, Zimbabwe’s new parliamentary speaker Lovemore Moyo, an MDC official, said on Wednesday.
”The talks are on,” Moyo told South Africa’s Talk Radio 702. He also said the heckling of Mugabe was regrettable but reflected MDC frustrations over the political deadlock in the country.
A deadlock in talks between Mugabe and Tsvangirai over how to share power has undermined hopes for an agreement that might allow Zimbabwe to recover from its devastating economic decline.
The world’s highest inflation rate of over 11-million percent and severe food, fuel and foreign currency shortages have driven millions to neighbouring countries.
Mugabe’s critics say his policies helped wreck the economy, in particular the seizure of white-owned commercial farms to give to inexperienced black farmers.
Mugabe criticised his former Cabinet strongly on Wednesday.
”The Cabinet that I had was the worst in history. They [only] look at themselves, they are unreliable, but not all of them. The people are suffering…,” the Herald quoted him as saying.
The MDC said Mugabe had no right to open Parliament. Mugabe was re-elected unopposed in a June vote boycotted by Tsvangirai because of violence and condemned around the world.
The opposition party said three of its deputies — elected in March elections in which the MDC gained the most seats — were arrested at Parliament on Tuesday on what it called trumped-up political violence charges. – Reuters