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Zimbabwe: Political rhetoric heats up as July 31 general election approaches
(AFP) – Zimbabwe Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai said Sunday he was launching his election campaign despite worries that the poll is taking place before all democratic reforms can be completed.Zimbabweans go to the polls in just over three weeks to end the unity government between Mugabe and Tsvangirai, who were forced to share power after the 2008 elections.
“We participate with a heavy heart,” 61-year-old Tsvangirai told over 10,000 supporters of his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) Sunday.
He said he had read “the national mood” felt by ordinary Zimbabweans to end years of suffering in a political and economic crisis created by the incumbent Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party.
Tsvangirai said Zimbabweans are eager to vote Mugabe out of power, however the MDC’s support has flagged after a poor show over four years in the power-sharing government.
But his party had “tried our best… against serious resistance”, he told a stadium in Marondera, a party stronghold 80 kilometers (50 miles) east of Harare.
His supporters were upbeat, thrusting their open palms — which the MDC uses as its symbol — in the air and waving party and country flags in the national colours of green, yellow, red, and black.
