Mnangagwa praises Tsvangirai

President Emmerson Mnangagwa has spoken glowingly about the late MDC founding father Morgan Tsvangirai while mocking the former trade unionist's successor, Nelson Chamisa who he is squaring up against at the watershed polls on Monday.

Wrote Mnangagwa in The Washington Times, "The choice before the country next week is stark. This election is making clear that my opponents have a very different understanding and meaning of the word "change". Up until the untimely passing of the opposition MDC-T's admirable principal - Morgan Tsvangirai - the change that party proffered held clarity. At its root was democracy that is both sustainable and certified.

"All political parties and candidates should have equal opportunity to put their agendas to the nation under not just the law as written, but through those laws as practised. A future that can be sustained rests on this very foundation. Yet the opportunity a free and fair election offers does not ensure every party seizes it.

"In that regard, the new opposition leadership has surprised: they have campaigned across all corners of the country and reached out and into districts few might have expected them before. But their prospects seem wasted when they talk so much of the past, rather than promoting a cogent platform for the future. When they have presented their plans, they are replete with high-speed bullet trains, vast motorway networks, and villages transformed into cities overnight; all complete - they insist - in the next five years."