Tsvangirai confident of ‘resounding’ victory

By AFP | July 31, 2013

PM and leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, Morgan Tsvangirai, at a campaign rally in Harare, July 29, 2013/AFP

HARARE, July 31 – Casting his ballot Wednesday, Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai expressed confidence he will win an historic and overwhelming victory against his veteran rival President Robert Mugabe.

Voting in Harare’s middle class suburb of Mt. Pleasant Tsvangirai predicted his party would win “quite resoundingly, I must say”.

“This is a very historic moment for all of us,” he added.

Tsvangirai is up against the 89 year old Mugabe, Africa’s oldest leader, who is running for election for the seventh and perhaps final time after a series of violent crackdowns, economic crises and suspect elections.

So far the election has seen little of the violence that plagued previous polls and forced Tsvangirai out of the race in 2008.

But the election has been overshadowed by suspicions of vote rigging, particularly double registration of some voters on the long delayed voter roll.

Tsvangirai described casting his ballot as an emotional moment “after all the conflict, the stalemate, the suspicion, the hostility.”

There is a sense that “finally Zimbabwe will be able to move on again”.