Zimbabwe ruling party, opposition locked in election battle

HARARE - Zimbabwe’s opposition and ruling party remained locked Sunday in a battle of wills over the presidential election with Robert Mugabe showing no sign of relinquishing his grip on power.
As Zimbabweans began a second week of waiting, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) sought to break the deadlock with a legal bid to force the electoral commission to declare a winner.
Their case was due to be heard at midday (1000 GMT) at the high court, but there was little expectation that it would help bring an end to the crisis facing the southern African nation.
Mugabe’s ruling ZANU-PF and the opposition have stepped up their battling rhetoric in recent days and MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai on Saturday declared himself for the first time the outright victor of the March 29 poll.
The MDC has already gained control of parliament by a slim margin in the simultaneous legislative elections, but the ZANU-PF is contesting enough seats to reverse that result.
Mugabe chaired a meeting of the ZANU-PF’s politburo on Friday at which he was endorsed to run in a second round run-off if neither of the two main contenders wins more than 50 percent of the presidential vote.
A party spokesman said after the meeting that a run-off was ”definite” and that the 84-year-old Mugabe was still certain to win his sixth consecutive term as president.
Tsvangirai warned on Saturday that Mugabe’s ruling party would resort to violence to help the country’s only leader since independence in 1980 cling to power.
“In the run-off, violence will be a new weapon to reverse the people’s victory,” he said.
“ZANU-PF is preparing a war against the people of Zimbabwe such as we witnessed in 2000,” when Mugabe failed to win backing in a referendum for a broadening of his powers.
Hours after Tsvangirai spoke, state television reported that the president’s supporters had seized one of the country’s few remaining white-owned farms.
With tensions rising between the government and opposition, long-time mediator Thabo Mbeki, the president of neighbouring South Africa, has called for patience from all sides.
“I think there is time to wait, let’s see the outcome of the election results,” Mbeki told reporters in London on Saturday after meeting Gordon Brown, the prime minister of Zimbabwe’s former colonial ruler Britain.
Brown said his talks with Mbeki and other African leaders had reached agreement on the need for foreign observers to monitor any second round.
Meanwhile, lawyers for two foreign journalists arrested at a Harare guest house on Thursday for breaching the country’s strict media laws were hoping the courts would set a hearing date for their legal bid to have them released.
Mugabe, who has led the country since independence in 1980, has presided over its demise from regional model to economic basket case.
Inflation is officially running at around 100,000 percent but most experts believe the real figure is several times higher.
With an unemployment rate of some 80 percent, around three million of Zimbabwe’s 13 million population have left the country, both to find work and food as even basics such as bread and cooking oil are now hard to come by.