Tsvangirai appeals for international community to monitor upcoming elections

Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai told delegates at the United Nations University in Tokyo yesterday that Zimbabwe was preparing for an election and he hoped regional and international leaders would monitor it to ensure a credible result to help end the troubled coalition government.

"As we prepare for the next election, I urge all of you to support the call for a free and fair election in Zimbabwe in which the people's will is respected and protected," Tsvangirai said.

"The people of Zimbabwe would greatly benefit from a global campaign to end violence and to ensure a credible poll in our country.

"I urge you all to support Sadc and the regional effort in stabilising the situation in Zimbabwe so that the people in our country are allowed to choose their own government without violence and intimidation," he said referring to South African leader President Jacob Zuma, who has a regional responsibility to mediate in the Zimbabwean power-sharing deal.

"I call upon every one of you to stand by us during this delicate moment, aware that we must all become global citizens ready to defend peace and democracy everywhere."

Tsvangirai is on an official visit to Japan and was proceeding to Australia and New Zealand where he was officially invited by the two governments.

The Prime Minister said he was confident he would win the next election to end the power-sharing deal he entered with Mugabe, adding that his main task would be to revive Zimbabwe's economy.

"Any government and leadership that claims to be in charge should have the clear mandate of its people," he said.

"What we have seen in coalitions such as the one in my country, Zimbabwe, demonstrates a serious breach and betrayal of the will of the people because those who lost the election were brought back into government through the formation of undemocratic 'inclusive' governments.

"Inclusive governments that are exclusive to the people's will. They have become more of elite pacts than the true expression of the will of the people."

The fragile coalition government has been marred by disagreements between the former political foes, with Tsvangirai claiming that Mugabe is reluctant to make Zimbabwe a democracy.

The Prime Minister has said elections would be held in 12 months.

Tsvangirai said while all African nations have gained their independence with the last bastion of a racist edifice collapsing with the advent of a new South Africa in 1994, he said he has had to wage a new struggle for democracy against some of the former nationalists who have perfected the same repression used by colonists to subjugate Africa for almost a century.

"As an opposition leader in our democratic struggle in Zimbabwe, I was treated with scorn, vilified with impunity and generally treated as an enemy. How dare I have a different view?

"This intolerance polarised the nation, scarred society and the people suffered as a consequence," he said.

"When the inclusive government was formed after protracted negotiations in 2009, I became Prime Minister, sharing national responsibilities with President Mugabe.

"I had won an election but did not win power because of certain pillars in the State that decided not to allow the will of the people to prevail. Now the barriers of suspicion are slowly collapsing and I am now an opponent and not an enemy."

The PM said the misfortune of Africa was that leaders have helped to confirm and to entrench the negative stereotype of a continent of political violence, conflict, disease, hunger and war.

"They have pilfered national resources, pick-pocketed the collective people's struggle and shut their ears to the loud national demand for democracy and good governance," Tsvangirai said.

"They have personalised national institutions, perfected the art of political patronage and undermined their own legacy."

He said this was the same culture that brought about the Arab Spring revolution that swept long-serving dictators in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya out of power. Tsvangirai said African leaders must realise that they were not immune to the revolutionary fervour that has swept through North Africa and now the Middle East.

"That challenge for us as the new crop of African leaders is to consign repression and mis-governance to the dustbins and to create a new society with new values," he said.

"We are a new generation which must focus on building strong economies, creating jobs and developing a qualitative and affordable social delivery system especially in the fields of health and education.

"We must embrace ICTs and become part of the global village. ICTs will enable us to realise our full potential and bring all citizens to the same level in terms of economic development and access to information."