ZIMBABWE: President Robert Mugabe said yesterday that Zimbabwe would implement wide-ranging electoral reforms before next year's parliamentary elections.
"On the basis of both the national debate and, of course, our experiences in running elections since 1980, government is proposing far-reaching reforms to our electoral law," he said in a speech officially opening a new session of parliament
It was Mugabe's first public comment on electoral changes promised by his ruling ZANU-PF party last month and largely welcomed by the opposition as paving the way for free elections.
Mugabe, at the centre of a political storm over his disputed re-election two years ago and his ruling ZANU-PF party's equally controversial victory in June 2000 parliamentary polls, urged the opposition to co-operate to enact the new electoral law. He said reforms would include setting up an independent election commission, a single day of voting instead of two, and counting of votes at polling centres - all conditions which the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has demanded as crucial for a fair poll.
An unusually conciliatory Mugabe, who normally peppers his political speeches with attacks on the MDC, which he calls a puppet of former colonial master Britain, avoided name-calling, and MDC legislators, who have boycotted some of his addresses, listened to him quietly.
But MDC deputies, who occupy a third of Zimbabwe's 150-member parliament, did not join ruling party members in giving Mugabe the traditional applause at the end of his remarks. The president said the new electoral law, which must be approved by a two-thirds of members of parliament, would need the cooperation of all political forces to pass. - (Reuters)