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Zimbabwe PM disengages from unity government

Special to USAfricaonline.com

HARARE, Zimbabwe — Zimbabwe’s prime minister announced he was boycotting the country’s troubled unity government Friday, citing the “persecution” of a top aide being tried in an alleged coup plot.

At a news conference Friday, longtime opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai said, “We are not really pulling out officially,” but that his party would not attend Cabinet meetings or engage in other executive work with Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party. Tsvangirai said his Movement for Democratic Change party would continue parliament activities.

Tsvangirai said the freeze will continue until there was a resolution of the dispute over Roy Bennett.

Bennett is being tried on charges linked to long-discredited allegations that his party, the MDC, plotted President Robert Mugabe’s violent overthrow.

The party’s move demonstrates deep unhappiness within the MDC with the coalition. But Tsvangirai has repeatedly said he sees the coalition as the only way to ensure Zimbabwe’s future, and he made that clear again by stopping short of bringing the government down.

Tsvangirai and Mugabe entered the unity government in February after two violence-plagued elections left the country at a political standstill and in economic ruin.

“Until confidence has been restored we can’t continue to pretend that everything is well,” Tsvangirai said. “It is our right to disengage from ZANU-PF.”

Bennett, who was ordered back to jail earlier this week after seven months on bail, was due to stand trial starting Monday.

Tsvangirai had nominated Bennett as deputy agriculture minister in the coalition. Bennett was arrested the day the Cabinet was sworn in February and charged with weapons violations. He denies the charges against him.

“Roy Bennett is not being prosecuted, he is being persecuted,” Tsvangirai said Friday.

Zimbabwe’s neighbors had urged Mugabe, who has held power since independence in 1980, to form the partnership with former labor leader Tsvangirai. In forming their coalition, the longtime opponents pledged to work together to turn around the country’s economic and political collapse.

Since the coalition was formed, Mugabe has demanded that Tsvangirai do more to get international sanctions lifted and restore foreign aid and investment. Tsvangirai has condemned continuing human rights violations.

The coalition is Mugabe’s only hope for taking Zimbabwe out of international isolation, and it has brought Tsvangirai closer to power than any election.