ZIMBABWE
For the People
Zimbabwe slated for July 30 its first presidential and parliamentary elections since the ouster of strongman Robert Mugabe.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who took power after a military coup unseated the longtime leader in November, pledged to ensure free and fair polls with international monitoring, Reuters reported.
For the first time in 20 years, the ballot will be missing the names of 94-year-old Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai, the longtime opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader who died of cancer in February.
If approved by international monitors, the election could boost foreign lending to Zimbabwe, which has been largely cut off for two decades, Reuters said. As the incumbent, Mnangagwa enjoys some advantages in a vote that’s likely to go down to the wire, as his main challenger, 40-year-old Nelson Chamisa from the MDC, has energized the opposition.
Billed as a contest between the old guard of Zimbabwe’s 1970s independence war and a younger generation, the election will grant Mnangagwa democratic legitimacy if he can win it.
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