Mugabe free to contest 2018 elections: Mutasa

By Staff Reporter

Presidential Affairs Minister Didymus Mutasa has said that President Robert Mugabe is constitutionally free to represent Zanu-PF at the 2018 national elections because he has only started serving his first term under the new Constitution.

This is despite the 89 year old having been in power for 33 years. At the end of his term, Mugabe will be 94 years old.

Mutasa, the Zanu PF Secretary for Administration was desperate to play down the fierce infighting that has seen a faction of the party led by Vice President Joice Mujuru engage in mortal combat with the one led by Justice Minister Emmerson Mnanggagwa.

Mutasa described by the Herald newspaper as a “dwarf in huge robes” claimed the weekend provincial polls which saw the Mujuru faction winning 9 out of 10 provinces were not about who will succeed Mugabe. Any talk of succession he claimed was premature.

“The thing to note is that Baba (President Mugabe) was elected for his first term under the new Constitution at the July 31 harmonised elections and the Constitution allows him to go for the second term,” Mutasa said.

“How can you succeed someone who has just started serving his first term? We conduct provincial elections after every four years and then in the fifth year, we have Congress to elect the national leadership.

“The provincial elections are a constitutional requirement and not about succession as claimed by those papers. Tell those people who say the elections were about succession that Cde Mutasa says; ‘let not your imaginations be so wild’.

“The other problem is the public Press is not speaking about succession, yet Baba (President Mugabe) said it himself that speak about it. But it becomes a problem when you start saying he must be succeeded now when he has just started, ” he said.