Mutasa battles to muzzle Young Turks

t Mutasa and the congress secretariat were hell bent on suppressing the succession issue.
“They are working flat out to ensure that Mugabe’s candidacy in the forthcoming presidential poll emerges without challenge after the December 6-9 gathering, which is technically an extraordinary congress tasked to endorse the ruling party candidate for next year’s poll,” said a source.
Party members who spoke to The Zimbabwean this week said they feared the
succession issue had already been suppressed.
The 2004 Zanu (PF) congress gave Mugabe a renewed five-year tenure at the helm of the party.
Mutasa was not available for comment. But party insiders said the issue was being manipulated to avoid embarrassing the aged President who many Young Turks now consider a liability to the party’s prospects in 2008. The Young Turks, led by Simba Makoni, are widely expected to lead a reformed Zanu (PF).
Muugabe’s spokesman George Charamba declared in his weekly acerbic column in a state-controlled daily that “so-called Mugabe’s successors will never be kings themselves; they can only hope to unmake Mugabe’s kingship for foreign interests.” Charamba’s syllogism was that “Arthur Mutambara has better credentials and prospects for a British-shaped post-Mugabe Zimbabwe than the so-called Zanu (PF) reformists all combined to the power of two!” He asserts Mugabe still has two more years to serve as the Zanu (PF) leader. – Chief Reporter