Tsvangirai delays return to Zim
19 May 2008
Fears of an assassination plot against Zimbabwe's opposition leader have delayed his homecoming ahead of a 27 June election showdown with veteran President Robert Mugabe.
After more than a month out of the country, Morgan Tsvangirai had been expected back on Saturday, but he switched plans at the last minute after a tip-off about a planned attempt on his life, his party said.
"We received information from a credible source this morning [Saturday] concerning a planned assassination attempt on Mr Tsvangirai," said Tsvangirai's spokesman, George Sibotshiwe.
He was unable to say whether the plot was state-backed and declined to give further details.
Violence has rocked Zimbabwe since a first round of elections in March in which Tsvangirai defeated Mugabe, with pro-government militias accused of harassing and killing opposition supporters.
Tsvangirai did not win the first round by enough to secure an outright victory, and he had been expected back to begin campaigning ahead of the run-off election scheduled for 27 June.
Critics of Tsvangirai say he has lost momentum since his victory in the March ballot.
On Saturday, meanwhile, Mugabe kicked off his campaign for re-election, themed: "100-percent total empowerment, independence."
Mugabe, 84, who has ruled the former British colony since independence in 1980, lost the first round by 43.2 percent to 47.9 percent against Tsvangirai and now is fighting for his political survival.
The election process has been marred by delays, violence and allegations of electoral fraud, and the country's economic woes deepen by the day, with official inflation at 165 000 percent and unemployment of 80 percent.
Tsvangirai, who said last weekend he would return within a couple of days, has made a series of demands to ensure a free and fair run-off election, including the presence of foreign peacekeepers and election monitors.
But Zimbabwe Foreign Minister Simbarashe Mumbengegwi said on Saturday that "there would be no further invitations" for election monitors, despite pressure from Western countries.
No Western monitors were allowed to oversee the first ballot, and teams from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the African Union (AU) were widely criticised for giving it a largely clean bill of health.
On Friday, an independent home-grown network of monitors that observed the first round said dozens of its activists had since been assaulted by suspected Zanu-PF supporters since the 29 March election.
Speaking on Friday, Tsvangirai promised to return to Zimbabwe to stand in solidarity with his supporters who, according to a raft of reports, have faced intimidation and violence from pro-government militias.
His party, the Movement for Democratic Change, says at least 32 of its supporters have perished in the violence.
Source: BuaNews-NNN
