Zimbabwe's main opposition leader announced on Tuesday he will boycott presidential elections scheduled for next year unless the poll is carried out under a new democratic constitution that ensures they are free and fair. Morgan Tsvangirai, addressing mourners at a memorial service for an opposition activist shot dead by police on March 11, said a free election was the constitutional and democratic right of Zimbabweans.Boycotting is absolutely the wrong move. Better to campaign hard and then wave the bloody shirt when they steal the election.
About 800 mourners, including opposition leaders wearing bandages and other signs of injuries sustained in clashes with police, sang traditional dirges and gospel songs and waved the opposition's symbolic open hand salute at a church in northern Harare. "We will never go into an election that is predetermined," Tsvangirai said, vowing to continue anti-government protests.
The opposition accuses President Robert Mugabe of rigging all elections since 2000 with the help of electoral laws and constitutional provisions favouring his party. Mugabe (83) is seen as unlikely to adopt a reformed constitution before polling, provisionally slated for next March.
Zimbabwe's long-time ruler, meanwhile, was to attend a hastily called regional meeting on politics and security called by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) in Tanzania beginning on Wednesday, the state media reported in Harare. An SADC official had said the meeting was to focus in part on Zimbabwe. The 12-nation regional bloc has been under intense international pressure to intervene in the deepening political and economic crisis in Zimbabwe following an upsurge in political violence this month.
Gift Tandare (31) died when police crushed a prayer meeting in the western Harare township of Highfield, which authorities said was a banned political protest. Tsvangirai and 12 senior opposition colleagues were hospitalised after being injured in the police action and alleged they were assaulted with clubs and iron bars while under arrest without provoking police.