Zimbabwean rivals register for elections

HARARE: Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe and long-time rival Morgan Tsvangirai registered yesterday for elections scheduled for July 31, in which Mugabe is seeking to extend his threedecade rule.

The 89-year-old leader will fight Tsvangirai, 61, for the presidency, while Zanu-PF faces Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in the parliamentary election, after four years in a forced coalition following a disputed 2008 vote.

Welshman Ncube, who leads a splinter MDC party, also entered the presidential race, but the serious contenders are Mugabe and Tsvangirai.

“As Zanu-PF we are confident of victory. We are supporting our president because we have progressive policies,” Defence Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa said.

In power since the former Rhodesia’s independence from Britain in 1980, Mugabe left Harare for a medical check-up in Singapore on Tuesday. Tsvangirai is already on the campaign trail in Zimbabwe’s south-western Matabeleland region.

Mugabe, Africa’s oldest leader, denies reports that he suffers from prostate cancer or other major health problems. He says he has cataracts and is expected home this weekend from what his spokesman called a routine visit to an eye specialist.

“He is fitter than you,” Mnangagwa told a journalist when asked whether Mugabe was healthy.

Tsvangirai has asked the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to prod Mugabe into delaying the poll to allow media and security reforms designed to prevent a repeat of the bloodshed that marred the 2008 election.

The government has asked the Constitutional Court to move the July 31 date, but local political analysts say it might not agree. A ruling on the appeal is expected next week.

Surveys conducted by US think tank Freedom House and African research group Afro-Barometer give Mugabe a small lead over Tsvangirai. – Reuters