Zimbabwe Decides - Some few facts about the election
- This is will be the first election since former long time leader, Robert Mugabe was ousted in a peaceful military coup in November, 2017 following his 37-year rule that had ruined the country economically.
-23 Presidential candidates will take part in the first round of election.
-There are two major contenders in the coming election, the ruling party, Zanu-PF leade by interim president, Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa and the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change lead by Nelson Chamisa.
-There will be a run-off election between the two main contenders if the winner of the first round fails to, get more than 50% of the votes.
- Three months ago Mnangagwa led the new MDC leader, Nelson Chamisa, by 11 points in the opinion polls, but by last week his lead had shrunk to only 3 percent. (Does this pass a message of hope?)
-Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa is a veteran of Zimbabwe’s independence war. He gained a fearsome reputation as national security minister during Zanu-PF’s war against a rival independence movement in the 1980s, during which thousands were killed and tens of thousands tortured.
-Zimbabwe has Africa’s best-educated populations: more than two-thirds of Zimbabweans aged 15-49 have attended secondary school.
-The unknown factor is the youth vote. Zimbabwe is a young country, with almost half the registered voters under 35, and they have never voted in a free and fair election before. Almost all of them, even the poorest, have mobile phones. They also have a reasonably good education, and they face a staggeringly high unemployment rate.
So who are Zimbabweans more likely to vote for,???
- 75-year-old Emmerson Mnangagwa, who bears the stains of almost every crime committed in Mugabe’s long rule, or
- For a quick-witted, humorous, 40-year-old newcomer called Nelson Chamisa?
Posts
