Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s party has renewed its calls for new elections this year, rejecting a timeline that his own negotiators hammered out last week, a state daily reported today.
“The politburo is unanimous that elections should be held this year,” The Herald newspaper quoted Zanu-PF spokesperson Rugare Gumbo as saying after the party’s top decision-making body met in the capital.
Negotiators from Mugabe’s party and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change agreed July 6 on a timeline for election preparations which would put the polls in 2012. But the politburo said negotiators in the power-sharing government should revise the timeline to ensure elections are held this year, Gumbo said.
“Some of the timelines in the roadmap are unacceptable. Days that have been assigned to deal with some of these issues are too long. For example, you cannot say preparation of the voters’ roll should take 60 days,” he said.
“By the end of the year we should have elections if they expedite the constitution-making process, particularly the drafting and referendum stages.”
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