Leaders of Zimbabwe's sole democratic opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), decided to expel its president over the weekend, deepening an already yawning internal split that has brought the party to the brink of insignificance.
It seemed unclear, however, whether the expulsion would stick or whether it would settle the struggle for control of the six-year-old movement, which has been torn by factional battles after a string of election defeats.
The president, Morgan Tsvangirai, was removed on Saturday by the disciplinary committee of the MDC, which is largely controlled by Tsvangirai's critics within the party. Tsvangirai's spokesman, William Bango, told news services that the expulsion was illegal and would be ignored.
An analyst of Zimbabwe politics for decades, Iden Wetherell, said in a telephone interview on Sunday evening that the two sides appeared to be jockeying for advantage in advance of a February party congress.
After nearly toppling Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe from power in elections early this decade, the MDC suffered punishing losses in elections this year for Zimbabwe's parliament -- in part, many outside election monitors said, because of voter fraud.
The MDC's leaders publicly fell out several months ago over whether to field a slate for last month's elections to the nation's newly reconstituted Senate. Tsvangirai had contended that the Senate elections were hopelessly rigged and should be boycotted, while the party's other senior leaders insisted that to sit out the elections would undermine the party's commitment to democratic change.
Privately, some senior members of the party say that they believe the MDC has been penetrated at high levels by Mugabe's omnipresent secret police and that the party is riven in part because of the government's success in sowing discord.
The party's debate about whether to take part in an election that might be rigged has descended into a bloodbath in recent months. Tsvangirai's critics have questioned what they call his increasingly undemocratic behavior, including what they say is his tolerance for attacks by youth gangs on some party members.
For his part, Tsvangirai has contended in recent days that a faction led by his party's second in command, Secretary-General Welshman Ncube, was plotting with Mugabe's supporters to assassinate him.
If Tsvangirai appeared on the defensive, Wetherell -- an editor of the weekly Zimbabwe Independent, one of the nation's few surviving newspapers not under state control -- said that he appeared to be successfully purging his critics within the MDC in advance of February's party congress.
Tsvangirai enjoys broad support among Zimbabwe's urban poor.
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