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08 February 2008
HARARE – Zimbabwe’s ruling ZANU PF party is re-vetting candidates for next months’ elections to ensure that only those “totally loyal” to President Robert Mugabe will stand on the party’s ticket, secretary for administration Didymus Mutasa said on Thursday.
Mutasa, a top confidante of Mugabe and is also intelligence and land reform minister, said ZANU PF would in the coming days intensify a campaign to weed out rebels linked to former finance minister Simba Makoni who this week announced he will stand against Mugabe in next months’ presidential poll.
"We have rebels in the party and we will have to look at who is who,” Mutasa told ZimOnline. “More importantly (we) want to ensure that whoever is representing ZANU-PF has total loyalty to President Mugabe. We are at a time when we have to redouble our vigilance. We are re-looking at who goes on our ticket.”
Makoni shook Zimbabwe’s ruling establishment to its foundations last Tuesday when he announced his mutiny against Mugabe, clearly stating he was not alone but working with many more like-minded people from the government and ZANU PF.
Mugabe has not yet commented in public about Makoni’s rebellion while ZANU PF legal secretary Emmerson Mnangagwa’s comment was to only repeat a party constitutional provision that members who stand as independents are automatically expelled.
Earlier this week, Mugabe postponed nomination of electoral candidates from tomorrow to February 15, a move government officials and state media claimed was because of a request by ZANU PF and the opposition MDC party for more time to select candidates.
However, authoritative sources in Mugabe’s office told ZimOnline the postponement was because the veteran leader wanted time to re-organise his party in the wake of Makoni’s rebellion.
Mugabe, normally a combative and cunning political fox, also on Wednesday cancelled a scheduled meeting of ZANU PF’s inner politburo cabinet, which had been expected to discuss Makoni’s rebellion. He did not give reasons.
However, Mutasa dismissed any suggestions of turmoil in ZANU PF, insisting the party that has been in power since Zimbabwe’s 1980 independence from Britain was still in control and would crush Makoni and his fellow rebels come election day on March 29.
He said: "Generally as a party we are in control. The election will come and ZANU-PF will win comfortably and that will be the end of Makoni and his group. This media hype will die down."
Zimbabwe is in the grip of an acute economic recession critics blame on mismanagement by Mugabe and seen in the world’s highest inflation rate of more than 26 000 percent, 80 percent unemployment and shortages of food, fuel and foreign currency.
Announcing his decision to challenge Mugabe, Makoni said Zimbabwe’s problems were chiefly a result of leadership failure, a thinly veiled attack on Mugabe.
Mugabe, who at once boasted that no one could have run Zimbabwe’s economy better than him, denies ruining the country and has promised a landslide victory in March to once again prove he has the backing of ordinary Zimbabweans. - ZimOnline
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