PRESIDENT MUGABE . . .

HARARE – Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe on Thursday ruled out quitting power saying he was ready to run in the next presidential election should his ZANU PF party ask him to do so.

Mugabe, who was addressing journalists in Harare, also said fresh elections to choose a new government to replace his uneasy coalition with Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai can only take place after completion of the country’s stop-start constitutional reforms.

Asked if he was considering running in future elections, Mugabe – 86, and the only ruler Zimbabweans have ever known since independence from Britain in 1980 – said he would be guided by ZANU PF on whether he should contest another election.

Should the party wish him to continue he would stand for president but he was also willing to step down if told to do so by the party, said Mugabe. “If ZANU PF say’s yes, I will go . . . I am a child of ZANU PF,” he said.

The veteran leader said new elections would “really be a product of success or failure of the constitution making process. As and when it will happen, it’s purely a question of time”.

With constitutional reforms lagging behind by at least seven months Mugabe’s comments suggest the new vote that was initially expected in 2011 might have to be delayed to probably 2012 or 2013.

Mugabe, who is accused of waging a ruthless campaign of violence and murder that forced Tsvangirai to withdraw from a 2008 presidential second round ballot the former opposition chief had been tipped to win after narrowly leading in the first round, said he was unable to rule out recurrence of political violence ahead of any new election.

But he urged political leaders to discourage followers from violence.

“A lot will depend on how our parties will conduct themselves on the ground. I will not say there will be no violence, (but) there is need for us as leaders to talk of national healing and peaceful elections, otherwise our youths will fight again,” he said when asked whether he did not fear an outbreak of political violence.

At least 200 supporters of Tsvangirai’s MDC party are believed to have died while no less than 10 000 were said to have been displaced in the violence in the run up to the June 2008 run-off poll won by Mugabe as sole candidate after the forced withdrawal of his challenger.

But Mugabe’s victory was rejected by the international community including some of his African allies forcing him to agree to form a power sharing a government with Tsvangirai and Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara.

The government has won plaudits for stabilising the economy but has scored poorly on political and democratic reforms, while critics say incessant bickering between Mugabe and Tsvangirai over how to share executive power as well as the administration’s inability to secure direct financial support from Western nations could ultimately render it ineffective.

But Mugabe, who was for the first time in a decade addressing journalists from all Zimbabwe’s newspaper stables including privately owned titles seen as unfriendly by ZANU PF, insisted his relationship with Tsvangirai was improving.

Turning to sanctions imposed by Western nations on him and his top allies, the Zimbabwean leader said Tsvangirai’s word was needed to have the punitive measures scrapped.

He said: “If I had my way I could do everything to get the sanctions removed but I have to accept the fact that the Prime Minister is listened to more than myself.

“So we will sit together to find a way forward soon. If I were to lead a team of people seeking to have the West remove the sanctions we would not succeed. In fact the result would be that we would be given more sanctions.”

But Mugabe repeated claims he did not have any substantial funds frozen in foreign accounts under the sanctions.

He implored the media to stop hate speech and instead to promote and support the inclusive government. He asked the state media to stop vilifying Tsvangirai and his MDC party while complaining that the country’s privately-owned newspapers were: “far too negative – seeking to highlight only the negative elements of the unity government”.

Mugabe, whose chaotic land redistribution programme is blamed for plunging Zimbabwe into hunger and is accused of grabbing several farms for himself, told the journalists he only had two farms adding that the others belonged to his young children.

He did not say which of his children who are all at school were also engaged in commercial farming neither did he explain the contradiction between his publicly stated one-man-one-farm policy and the fact that he owns two farms. – ZimOnline