'Mugabe working hard on economy'

President Robert Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF party has reacted with disgust to accusations from the opposition that he has failed to get the economy moving, thereby endangering the lives of citizens.

In a statement issued on Tuesday, Zanu-PF spokesperson Rugare Gumbo described MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai as a habitual liar with no moral standing.

"We are appalled by former Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's desire to mislead the nation by making outrageous claims of incompetence on the part of Mugabe's government," Gumbo said.

"We are equally disturbed by Tsvangirai's attempt to lie to the nation by claiming that he is a man of high moral standing. Neither of these claims is true and both are meant to cast Tsvangirai as a politician of substance which, based on the available evidence, he quite evidently is not."

In a document titled Personal Reflections in which he apologised for taking his MDC-T party into an election when "we knew there was rigging going on", Tsvangirai said Zimbabweans have been turned into informal traders.

"The nation has become one big mall, a huge Siyaso market with everyone trying to sell something to someone just to make ends meet. I saw villagers struggling to buy basics for their families, huge families surviving on far much less than $1 per day," said the MDC-T leader who has been in fire-fighting mode over cat-calls from hawks in his party to leave office.

"The question on everybody's mind is how so much pain, despair and desperation can immediately follow what our colleagues in Zanu-PF would want to call a resounding victory that gave them an overwhelming mandate?"

Gumbo said Mugabe's government was  working hard to stabilise the country's economy.

"Mugabe's government is doing everything in its power to ensure economic stability and progress as evidenced by the around-the-clock efforts to lure foreign direct investment and ensure value addition of all minerals," the Zanu-PF information boss said. "Accordingly, anybody who questions Mugabe's capacity and efforts not only has a short memory as history is littered with countless success stories, but is clearly being partisan and trying to smear and demean the efforts of a well performing government."

The statement came short of characterising Tsvangirai as a sore loser.

"Tsvangirai is a three-time loser who has no standing to comment on any political issue and whose intentions towards the welfare of the Zimbabwean people are negative and well-known. He must allow those who won elections to do their job freely and without peddling falsehoods as this has a negative effect of attracting retrogressive publicity around the country," the statement added.

In his personal reflection, Tsvangirai, accused of sexual escapades with a plethora of women at home and across borders, said he is a "man misunderstood" because he had gone through an emotional roller-coaster following the death of his wife, Susan, in a freak accident in 2009.

Gumbo said Tsvangirai's moral turpitude is legendary.

"As for his attempt to cast himself as a man of righteousness, the less said about his questionable moral standing the better. The ugly truth is that Tsvangirai has shown himself over and over, not only to be a failed politician of loose morals, but as a liar whose utterances should be taken with a grain of salt. In fact it is safe for the nation to assume that whenever Tsvangirai's lips are moving, he is lying," said Gumbo.