President Mugabe Acknowledges Defeat In Referendum February 17, 2000 Rangarirai Shoko PANA Correspondent HARARE, Zimbabwe (PANA) - Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has acknowledged defeat in a weekend plebiscite on a draft constitution his government had drawn, and immediately ordered top lieutenants of his governing party to an urgent meeting to plot an election strategy for parliamentary polls in April. In a televised address to the nation Wednesday, he said his government, which had comfortably won elections since independence in 1980, accepted defeat, and urged national reconciliation. "Let us all, winners and losers, accept the referendum verdict and start planning our way forward," Mugabe, visibly shaken by his first electoral setback, said. "The world now knows Zimbabwe as that country where opposing views and opinions can file so peacefully, both to and from the booth, without incident. Indeed, this is as it should be and I have every confidence that the forthcoming general elections will be just as orderly, peaceful and as dignified," he added. But the victors, a coalition of opposition parties and human rights groups, said the government's defeat in the plebiscite showed Zimbabweans had lost faith in Mugabe and demanded he steps down immediately. "In a normal democracy, when a sitting government suffers such a defeat, the honourable thing is to resign. The arrogance of the government does not help," Morgan Tsvangirai, president of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change party which heavily campaigned against the draft constitution, said. The government, which was originally favoured to win, secured 45 percent of the votes against 55 percent for the opposition, which argued the draft constitution entrenched Mugabe's overwhelming executive powers allowing him, among other things, to dissolve cabinet and parliament and rule by decree. On the other hand, the government said the draft constitution, compiled after nation-wide consultations with the people, was intended to finally detach Zimbabwe from the British colonial past by carrying out a complete surgery on the current supreme law which London imposed on the country at independence. But as the political dust began to settle Wednesday, analysts wondered who the real victor in the plebiscite, Zimbabwe's first as an independent nation, was in the short to medium term. The government immediately said parliamentary elections in April would be conducted under the current constitution, which favours the incumbent administration. The rejected draft constitution, which could have taken immediate effect, offered proportional representation in parliament, as opposed to the current constituency-based system which gives an electoral advantage to Mugabe. Opposition parties have always been unable to field candidates in all the country's 120 constituencies, and political analysts said it was unlikely any of the parties would be able to do so in the forthcoming parliamentary elections. The draft constitution had also provided for an independent electoral body to replace the existing one the government funds and runs, which the opposition has repeatedly accused of being impartial in its conduct of polls. "In a way, the opposition have disadvantaged themselves because they will now go into the elections under worse off electoral conditions than was going to be the case had the new constitution been adopted and put into effect," a University of Zimbabwe political science lecturer said. Tsvangirai admitted the political playing field was now much more difficult for opposition parties, especially in the crucial rural constituencies where they have to field candidates people did not know. "It means more hard work ahead," he said. But political analysts said they were sceptical the opposition parties would be able to grab a significant portion of the rural vote with less than two months before elections. However, stung by the victory of the opposition, Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe for two decades without interruption, called for a meeting of senior members of his governing ZANU-PF party Wednesday to map out an election strategy for the forthcoming polls. "We now have to re-strategise and re-mobilise the people to fight against retrogressive forces which want to re-establish white power in Zimbabwe," Chen Chimutengwende, the information minister, said. The government has repeatedly accused the opposition, especially the labour-backed Movement for Democratic Change party, of being manipulated by the country's minority whites to block it from pursuing economic programmes favourable to blacks such as land reform. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright © 2000 Panafrican News Agency. All Rights Reserved. ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html ----------------------------------------------------------------------------