Redding News Review (Atlanta)
29 May 2008
ZIMBABWEAN Ambassador to the United States Machivenyika Mapuranga Tuesday fired back at comments made by American presidential hopeful Senator Hillary Clinton, who compared the Democratic Party's discounted primaries in Florida and Michigan to the harmonised re-election results of President Robert Mugabe.
Mapuranga said Clinton's comparison was made "out of ignorance or malice" and do not "tally with the facts."
"There were four presidential candidates and none of them attained the requisite threshold of 50 percent plus 1 votes," Mapuranga said. "The Electoral Act provides that in that event there must be a run-off between the two top candidates."
Clinton, who is hoping that the inclusion of vote counts from the Florida and Michigan primaries will help her win her party's nomination, said last Wednesday that it is wrong when people go through the motions of an election only to have them discarded and disregarded, according to CBS News.
"We're seeing that right now in Zimbabwe," she was reported to have told a crowd in South Florida.
"Tragically, an election was held, the President [Mugabe] lost, they refused to abide by the will of the people," she said.
Ambassador Mapuranga responded to these statements saying this was mere 'ignorance' on the part of Clinton.
"The 29th March 2008 election resulted in the ruling party (Zanu PF) winning 97 seats, and the opposition party (MDC) winning 99 seats, as declared by the independent electoral commission," Mapuranga said.
"If Sen. Hillary Clinton was not aware of these facts, her ignorance can be excused considering the stressful situation she is in because of her faltering campaign; but if she was aware of the facts, we can only conclude that this is yet another of her misspoken utterances."
U.S. journalists dismissed Clinton's statement as not altruistic and self serving.
Popular journalist and blogger, Andrew Sullivan said Clinton's "losing is so ugly, so feckless, so riddled with narcissism and pathology that this kind of person should never be a heartbeat away from the presidency."
Meanwhile, diplomatic relations between Zimbabwe and the United States came under more strain on Wednesday when authorities in Harare accused Washington's envoy to South Africa of sneaking into the country to meet his Zimbabwean counterpart.
U.S. officials in both Harare and Pretoria denied the ambassador had made such a journey on Tuesday and said it was a case of mistaken identity.President Robert Mugabe on Sunday threatened to expel the United States ambassador to Zimbabwe, James McGee whom he criticized for giving political advice to the Movement for Democratic Change leader ahead of a crucial presidential runoff election.
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