Top official in Mugabe party backs election rival

A senior official in Zimbabwe's ruling party said yesterday he would support one of the main challengers to President Robert Mugabe in the March 29 election in a major political blow to the veteran leader.

Dumiso Dabengwa, a politburo member in Mugabe's ZANU-PF, threw his weight behind former finance minister Simba Makoni during the launch of Makoni's presidential campaign.

"This is a rescue operation. We have stood up to rescue the situation," Dabengwa told Reuters.

The move could significantly strengthen the bid by Makoni, a former Mugabe ally, to defeat the defiant president who has been in power since Zimbabwe's independence from Britain in 1980.

Makoni is standing as an independent after being expelled from ZANU-PF, and Mugabe also faces Morgan Tsvangirai, a long time rival from the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

Mugabe has capitalised on a weak opposition to maintain a tight grip on Zimbabwe despite a severe economic crisis, and critics say he has used repressive measures to stifle dissent.

Addressing a rally of about 6,000 people at White City Stadium, Makoni blamed Zimbabwe's leadership for the economic problems that have brought the country to its knees.

"We are in a movement for renewal, revival," he told a crowd that mobbed him. Some held up placards saying 'Sima for the people' and 'Let's get Zimbabwe working again' in Zimbabwe's second city Bulawayo, an opposition stronghold.

Dabengwa declared his support for Makoni at a meeting between the presidential hopeful and business leaders.

"We urged him (Makoni) to come clean and take the burden and we will give him the necessary facilitation and support," said Dabengwa, a former home affairs minister and commander in the liberation movement before independence.

Millions of Zimbabweans hoping for an end to daily hardships are expected to vote in the presidential, parliamentary and municipal polls described by Mugabe and his opponents as a landmark poll in the post-independence period.

Mugabe has denounced opponents as charlatans, witches and political prostitutes. Dabengwa said he did not intend to leave ZANU-PF but it is unlikely the party will allow him to stay. "If they think we are political prostitutes and decide to throw us out, so be it," he told Reuters.

Mugabe says Western foes are working with the opposition to oust him in retaliation for his policy of seizing white-owned commercial farms to resettle landless blacks.

His government has effectively been under Western economic sanctions since ZANU-PF's controversial election victory in 2000. The MDC says Mugabe has fraudulently won previous elections and unleashed violence against opposition supporters.

Mugabe promised in his election manifesto to boost agricultural production by continuing to equip those farmers who had benefited from the land grabs.

His opponents have also made ambitious promises to ease the crisis ravaging Zimbabweans, who are more concerned with battling the world's highest inflation rate of more than 100,000 percent and food and fuel shortages, than politics.