adminHerald Reporter
CONGRATULATORY messages for President Mugabe and Zanu-PF continued pouring in from world leaders, observer missions and multi-lateral blocs following their landslide victory in the harmonised polls.Eleven out of 14 Sadc member states have so far sent in their endorsements and congratulations.
The African Union, Sadc, Comesa, ACP and the UN have also endorsed the successful polls.
Tidings of solidarity have also trickled in from Russia, China, Venezuela, Korea, Egypt, Malawi, DRC, Mozambique, Namibia, Mauritius, Seychelles, Zambia, South Africa, Tanzania, Nigeria, Lesotho, Eritrea, Benin, South Sudan and Saharawi, notwithstanding isolated reservations by Britain and Australia.
President Mugabe trounced four presidential contenders with a landslide 61,09 percent to MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai’s 33,94 percent, with Welshman Ncube (MDC), Dumiso Dabengwa (Zapu) and Kisinoti Mukwazhe (ZDP) sharing a paltry 4,97 percent. Zanu PF won 160 National Assembly seats to MDC-T’s 49, with one seat going to an independent candidate.
Chairperson of the Sadc Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Co-operation, President Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania is slated to present the Sadc observer mission’s final report on the harmonised elections, amid expectations that Zimbabwe would be officially struck off the Sadc agenda at the summit and South Africa discharged from its mediation task.
Out-going Sadc chairperson and Mozambican President Armando Emilio said: “Your victory and that of Zanu-PF in a landslide manner at the July 31 2013 harmonised and Sadc rules-based elections create the conditions for striking your great country out of the Sadc agenda, as a stand-alone political item.”
The 33rd ordinary summit of Sadc Heads of State and Government, which will be held in Lilongwe, Malawi, from August 17 to 18 and is expected to deliberate on a varied range of regional issues, chiefly the appointment of a new leadership for the secretariat as executive secretary Dr Tomaz Salamao is coming to the end of his second four-year term.
Sadc is also expected to lobby Western countries to lift their illegal sanctions on Zimbabwe.
Online Reporter