TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Mugabe faces impeachment after balking at retirement
Change Size
A man looks at a television set broadcasting a state address by Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe in Mbare, Harare on Nov. 19, 2017. Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, in a much-expected TV address, stressed he was still in power after his authoritarian 37-year reign was rocked by a military takeover. Many Zimbabweans expected Mugabe to resign after the army seized power last week. But Mugabe delivered his speech alongside the uniformed generals who were behind the military intervention. In his address, Mugabe made no reference to the clamour for him to resign. (Agence France -Presse/ZINYANGE AUNTONY )
Z
imbabwean lawmakers are set to begin impeachment proceedings against President Robert Mugabe on Monday, after he defied a ruling party directive to end his 37-year rule.
The 93-year-old Mugabe was widely expected to announce that he was stepping down in a televised address on Sunday night to enable Emmerson Mnangagwa, who he had fired as vice president earlier this month, to take over. Mugabe instead delivered a rambling and largely incoherent speech, in which he pledged to preside over a ruling party congress that’s due to take place in December.
Three senior party officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said Mugabe deviated from an agreed-upon-text and he’ll now be forced from office by the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front. An impeachment motion may be filed as early as Tuesday, when Parliament is due to resume sitting.
“Yesterday, the party recalled him, so today they’ll start impeachment proceedings against him,” Chris Mutsvangwa, the head of the Zimbabwe War Veterans Association, which has been at the forefront of the campaign for Mugabe’s removal, told reporters in Harare, the capital, on Monday. “He swapped the agreement and he proceeds to pretend as if everything is normal.”
The ruling party dumped Mugabe as its leader on Sunday, four days after the military placed him under house arrest and detained several of his closest allies -- a move triggered by his dismissal of Mnangagwa, 75. The former vice president will be reinstated, take over as interim leader and be Zanu-PF’s presidential candidate in elections next year. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Harare and Bulawayo, the second-largest city, on Saturday to celebrate Mugabe’s imminent ouster.
The moves against Mugabe are the culmination of a battle for control of the ruling party between a military-aligned faction that’s coalesced around Mnangagwa and another known as the G-40, which wants the president’s wife Grace Mugabe to succeed him. Mnangagwa, who’s one of the pillars of the security establishment that has helped keep Mugabe in power since Zimbabwe gained independence in 1980, emerged as the victor, with the party expelling Grace and her allies from its ranks.
