Ray Nkosi | President Robert Mugabe says he is ready to face the opposition which includes veteran opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and perhaps #ThisFlag Pastor Evan Mawarire in the crucial forthcoming 2018 Presidential elections.
Asked in an interview by the state media on Zanu PF’s readiness for the 2018 polls, Mugabe responded, “Zanu-PF is ever ready. You know that battery, which is written Everready, always yielding power. We stand ready all the time, but the issue is that of ensuring unity within us.
Zanu-PF infighting won’t stop the revolutionary party from posting a resounding victory, Mugabe said.
In any case, the President and Zanu-PF First Secretary said, all differences were being ironed out through the relevant party structures. He made the remarks in a wide-ranging interview with ZBC-TV to mark his 93rd birthday yesterday. Born on February 21, 1924, President Mugabe will have his official celebrations in Matopos on Saturday.
“The quarrels within the party, suspicions within the party, we are remedying those ones. So, it will not take us time to be in full gear. We do not have differences that can really mar our participation in the election. We have been at this game for a long time and we are not vana Zim (People) First. It’s born in the morning and before sunset, it has become something else.”
He scoffed at accusations by opposition parties that zanu-pf was infiltrating them and causing their disintegration.
“Well, where are we infiltrating them?” he asked.
“Have they given us the persons? Infiltration is an act of getting your people clandestinely into their organisations. Infiltrate MDC-T, kuti tidii? We haven’t done such a thing. It’s failures on their part and quarrels, of course, within them.”
President Mugabe added, “They are not as well organised as ourselves, our party, no definite principles guiding them. Look at the Press. Day in, day out, just attacks on us, Zanu-PF, something about Mugabe, something about the First Lady, to sell their organs. But what do they talk about? Our industries, by way of policies that they envisage, mining industry, agriculture, the utilities, infrastructure? What are the policies that they have in these areas of the sectors of our economy? Hapana!”
Mugabe also ruled out the possibility of a successor at the moment, a statement many viewed as a snub to Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa who had positioned himself as heir apparent.
With billions of dollars from all the looting going on in Marange to bankroll Zanu PF’s vote rigging schemes and not even one democratic reform implemented which means the party has total control of all the State Institution to order as the regime sees fit in helping it in its vote rigging; of course the party can afford to be very confident of another landslide victory.
The only thing that will get President Mugabe and his Zanu PF thugs to worry about elections is if the elections were free, fair and credible which is why the tyrant was ever so nice to Tsvangirai and his MDC friends and spoilt them rotten just to make sure they did not implement even one democratic reform.
Whilst another rigged election will suit Mugabe to the T it will spell economic disaster to the nation because nothing will be done to end the country’s worsening economic meltdown. The situation is now so bad that it is just a matter of time before we have the same street protests that rocked the country last year only this time they will be worse.
Zimbabwe is right of the edge of the abyss and another rigged election will tip the country over the edge. We have our last chance to save the country by stopping another rigged elections. We must stop Tsvangirai and his sell-out opposition friends contesting a flawed election!