Zimbabwe’s opposition movement healed long-standing divisions and declared that it had won control of parliament for the first time in history — and that Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe must concede defeat.
They also asked the UN Security Council to send a special envoy to Zimbabwe and to warn Mugabe that mounting violence against opposition supporters was tantamount to “crimes against humanity.”
Putting months of bickering behind them, Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leaders Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara stood united to order Mugabe to step aside.
PHOTO: AP
“Old man, go and have an honorable exit,” Tsvangirai said in a message on Monday to the 84-year-old autocrat who has ruled since independence from Britain in 1980.
“In a parliamentary democracy, the majority rule,” Tsvangirai said alongside Mutambara at a news conference at a Johannesburg airport. “He should concede that ... he cannot be president.”
More than a month after the elections, results from the presidential race have not been announced. Tsvangirai says he won the presidency outright — although independent observers say he fell just short of the votes needed to avoid a runoff.
Tsvangirai reiterated on Monday that he would not take part in a runoff.
“The question about a runoff doesn’t arise. It doesn’t arise because of the simple fact that the people have spoken, the people have decided,” he said before boarding a plane for Tanzania, whose president takes over the African Union’s (AU) rotating presidency.
Former Malian president Alpha Konare, the outgoing AU chairman, urged the release of poll results.
“The election results must be released to stop the violence,” Konare said.
“We hope that the president of Zimbabwe accepts these results,” he said in a statement.
MDC Secretary-General Tendai Biti was due at UN headquarters in New York yesterday when the Security Council was scheduled to discuss the deteriorating situation in Zimbabwe.
Tsvangirai said Biti was to ask that the Security Council first “stop the violence, and to communicate to the regime in Harare that its actions are tantamount to crimes against humanity.”
The opposition says hundreds of its supporters have been arrested, attacked or driven from their homes, especially in rural areas that used to be Mugabe strongholds but voted against him in the polls. It says that 14 of its supporters have died.
The Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights says more than 63 people were hospitalized in three days last week alone, and provided photos of injuries.
Tsvangirai said his supporters were powerless against the onslaught, which is allegedly perpetrated by ruling party thugs and youth militias, with support from the chief of the armed forces.
VAGUE: The criteria of the amnesty remain unclear, but it would cover political violence from 1999 to today, and those convicted of murder or drug trafficking would not qualify Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodriguez on Friday announced an amnesty bill that could lead to the release of hundreds of prisoners, including opposition leaders, journalists and human rights activists detained for political reasons. The measure had long been sought by the US-backed opposition. It is the latest concession Rodriguez has made since taking the reins of the country on Jan. 3 after the brazen seizure of then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. Rodriguez told a gathering of justices, magistrates, ministers, military brass and other government leaders that the ruling party-controlled Venezuelan National Assembly would take up the bill with urgency. Rodriguez also announced the shutdown
Civil society leaders and members of a left-wing coalition yesterday filed impeachment complaints against Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte, restarting a process sidelined by the Supreme Court last year. Both cases accuse Duterte of misusing public funds during her term as education secretary, while one revives allegations that she threatened to assassinate former ally Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The filings come on the same day that a committee in the House of Representatives was to begin hearings into impeachment complaints against Marcos, accused of corruption tied to a spiraling scandal over bogus flood control projects. Under the constitution, an impeachment by the
Exiled Tibetans began a unique global election yesterday for a government representing a homeland many have never seen, as part of a democratic exercise voters say carries great weight. From red-robed Buddhist monks in the snowy Himalayas, to political exiles in megacities across South Asia, to refugees in Australia, Europe and North America, voting takes place in 27 countries — but not China. “Elections ... show that the struggle for Tibet’s freedom and independence continues from generation to generation,” said candidate Gyaltsen Chokye, 33, who is based in the Indian hill-town of Dharamsala, headquarters of the government-in-exile, the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA). It
A Virginia man having an affair with the family’s Brazilian au pair on Monday was found guilty of murdering his wife and another man that prosecutors say was lured to the house as a fall guy. Brendan Banfield, a former Internal Revenue Service law enforcement officer, told police he came across Joseph Ryan attacking his wife, Christine Banfield, with a knife on the morning of Feb. 24, 2023. He shot Ryan and then Juliana Magalhaes, the au pair, shot him, too, but officials argued in court that the story was too good to be true, telling jurors that Brendan Banfield set
RSS