No vote allowed on candidacy at Zanu-PF meeting
Amidst familiar late-night scenes of
dancing, hand-clapping, ululating and cheering, President Robert Mugabe
yesterday steamrollered through any opposition to be endorsed as the ruling
party Zanu-PF candidate in Zimbabwe's presidential election in
March.
The ten thousand delegates at the party's
Extraordinary Congress in Harare were not given a chance to vote. Instead they
were instructed to adopt the central committee's report backing Mugabe by
acclamation.
Different wings of the party, including the
Women's League, the War Veterans, and crucially the chairmen of the party's ten
provinces also endorsed Mugabe, effectively silencing the rival faction led by
Vice President Joyce Mujuru.
On the podium, a triumphant Mugabe greeted
his senior officials individually. When Mujuru and her husband, retired general
Solomon Mujuru, approached he snubbed them by ignoring their outstretched
hands.
While his women ministers dancing before the podium Mugabe had a
defiant message for the ecstatic delegates.
"We will not be vanquished,"
he said. "We have waged this good fight against imperialism on the strength of
our unity. Sanctions may be painful but we will conquer if we remain united. I
don't weigh much, just 75kg, but when I raise my fist the world should know that
I have 14 million people behind me."
Mugabe has ruled Zimbabwe since
1980, presiding over the country's disastrous economic decline, to a point where
the country's official inflation rate stands today at 14,840 per cent, the
highest in the world.
THis is a sad day for Zimbabwe. Lets pack our bags and invade South Africa because they are supporting this guy.
Posted by: john | Saturday, 15 December 2007 at 10:59