Word: tsvangirai
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...Saturday, two weeks to the day after they faced off in Zimbabwe's general election, President Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai will confront each other once more at an emergency meeting of regional heads of government in Zambia...
...Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa called a conference of the 14-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC) in the Zambian capital Lusaka to discuss the delay in the release of results in Zimbabwe's presidential race. Though Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) won a parliamentary majority in the March 29 vote, the Zimbabwe Election Commission (ZEC) has not released the official result in the presidential race. An independent survey places Tsvangirai well ahead in the vote, and the MDC itself claims an outright victory after 28 years of Mugabe's rule...
...physical contrast between Tsvangirai and Mugabe emphasizes the gulf between them. Tsvangirai is ebullient and casual, wears cowboy hats and has the burly figure of a man fond of food.Mugabe sports a tiny Hitler mustache and favors tailored suits but sometimes wears shirts and baseball caps bearing images of his own face. The two men appeal to different sections of Zimbabwean society--Mugabe to rural villagers and liberation stalwarts, Tsvangirai to the young and the urban...
...Tsvangirai is short on specifics of how he would improve on Mugabe. The emphasis is on doing what the 84-year-old has not done. The opposition's manifesto promises "a sound economy, agriculture and livelihoods, a new constitution and good governance"; leadership on HIV/AIDS, which has infected 2.3 million people; and empowering the youth. In a softening of Mugabe's policy, white-owned farms would not be handed back to their former owners. Rather, the government would curb "corrupt and self-serving" land seizures while remaining committed to "systematic land reform that benefits the black people of Zimbabwe...
...Tsvangirai's record as Zimbabwe's main opposition leader has some blemishes. In 2005 the MDC split in two after a breakaway faction questioned what it perceived as Tsvangirai's autocratic tendencies. The division led to doubts about his leadership skills. "There are some real concerns about him and his ability," says Alex Vines, head of the Africa Program at Chatham House in London. Tsvangirai's reponse: "Every leader has his faults. I am not a perfect human being." After 28 years of Mugabe, Zimbabweans may be happy to settle for less than perfect...