HARARE, Zimbabwe: Zimbabwe’s new president is showing signs of charting a path different from that of his ousted mentor, Robert Mugabe, as he tries to win over the country before next year’s elections.
On Friday, the ruling ZANU-PF party is expected to endorse President Emmerson Mnangagwa as party leader and its presidential candidate. The elections are a key test of his promises to strengthen Zimbabwe’s democracy and attract badly needed foreign investment to revive a devastated economy.
The party congress also will endorse the recall of 93-year-old Mugabe from the party and government, said spokesman Simon Khaya Moyo, completing last month’s dramatic events that saw the military put Mugabe under house arrest, scores of thousands rally in the streets and lawmakers begin impeachment proceedings before the longtime leader resigned.
Mnangagwa at his inauguration described Mugabe as a “father, comrade-in-arms and my leader” but called his swearing-in the day “Zimbabwe renews itself.”
Zimbabweans and others are watching closely to see whether Mnangagwa, a longtime Mugabe ally whose firing as vice president led the country to turn against the president after 37 years in power, can step out of his mentor’s shadow.
So far he has made some bold moves, despite stocking the new Cabinet with military and ruling party members and shutting out the opposition.
A new budget plan by Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa proposes to reduce diplomatic missions and ban first-class travel for everyone but the president as the government tries to cut costs and repair the once-prosperous economy.
The southern African nation also plans to amend an unpopular, Mugabe-backed indigenization law limiting foreign ownership of businesses to no more than 49 percent of shares.
Zimbabwe’s police, known for setting up numerous roadblocks and demanding bribes, have been removed from the streets and told to reform, while Cabinet ministers who rarely attended parliamentary question-and-answer sessions seem to have changed their ways.
Such changes would have been unthinkable under Mugabe, who was widely criticized for mismanaging the economy so badly that millions of people fled abroad and many in the well-educated nation were reduced to street vending.
The 75-year-old Mnangagwa, who raised the loudest cheers at his inauguration with the promise of “jobs, jobs, jobs,” is at his office before 8 a.m. these days and his motorcade has been seen there on weekends, signaling what some allies call a new work ethic. Among the complaints raised by the ruling party during impeachment proceedings against Mugabe was that he was too old to rule and routinely slept in meetings.
Yet amid the transformation some things have remained the same.
“Mnangagwa is showing postures of one willing to reform and not necessarily change,” said Alex Rusero, a Harare-based political analyst.
Reminiscent of Mugabe’s days, state enterprises have been splashing advertisements in state-run media congratulating the new leader and pledging their loyalty.
“It is a desperate indicator of how ZANU-PF has over the years become a source of livelihood such that failure to exhibit enthusiastic bootlicking, accompanied by hero-worshipping, might automatically translate to deprivation of that very same livelihood. It’s a survival tactic,” Rusero said.
At the ZANU-PF party’s headquarters, Mnangagwa’s face has replaced Mugabe’s on billboards.
“They seem keen to build a personality cult around Mnangagwa just like they did with Mugabe,” said Gabriel Shumba, a human rights lawyer and chairman of the South Africa-based Zimbabwe Exiles Forum.
Zimbabwe’s economy is yet to respond favorably to the change in leadership. Prices of basic food and household items are going up, while banks are still struggling to dispense scarce cash to customers.
The euphoria that greeted Mugabe’s resignation seems to be giving way to expectation. “Things are still tough,” said Anesu Kaeresera, waiting in a bank line.
“You can put up tanks against a seating president, but you can’t put tanks against a non-performing economy,” Tendai Biti, an opposition leader and former finance minister, said on Twitter.
Mnangagwa seems aware of the huge expectations.
“As time is of the essence, we thus need to pursue high-speed program execution,” he told his new ministers at the first Cabinet meeting on Dec. 5.
Some Zimbabweans are expressing concern that two former military commanders are in top Cabinet positions and that the military, cheered by many for its role in removing Mugabe, still seems to be in charge of law enforcement. Soldiers are still visible on the streets of the capital and have mounted roadblocks on all major highways.
“Soldiers belong to the barracks and they must return there,” said Dewa Mavhinga, the southern Africa director for Human Rights Watch. “Their history of human rights abuses makes their presence discomforting.”
Zimbabwe’s new leader begins journey to key 2018 election
Zimbabwe’s new leader begins journey to key 2018 election
War powers resolution fails in Senate as 2 Republicans bow to Trump pressure
WASHINGTON: Senate Republicans voted to dismiss a war powers resolution Wednesday that would have limited President Donald Trump’s ability to conduct further attacks on Venezuela after two GOP senators reversed course on supporting the legislation.
Trump put intense pressure on five Republican senators who joined with Democrats to advance the resolution last week and ultimately prevailed in heading off passage of the legislation. Two of the Republicans — Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Todd Young of Indiana — flipped under the pressure.
Vice President JD Vance had to break the 50-50 deadlock in the Senate on a Republican motion to dismiss the bill.
The outcome of the high-profile vote demonstrated how Trump still has command over much of the Republican conference, yet the razor-thin vote tally also showed the growing concern on Capitol Hill over the president’s aggressive foreign policy ambitions.
Democrats forced the debate after US troops captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in a surprise nighttime raid earlier this month
“Here we have one of the most successful attacks ever and they find a way to be against it. It’s pretty amazing. And it’s a shame,” Trump said at a speech in Michigan Tuesday. He also hurled insults at several of the Republicans who advanced the legislation, calling Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky a “stone cold loser” and Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine “disasters.” Those three Republicans stuck to their support for the legislation.
Trump’s latest comments followed earlier phone calls with the senators, which they described as terse. The president’s fury underscored how the war powers vote had taken on new political significance as Trump also threatens military action to accomplish his goal of possessing Greenland.
The legislation, even if it had cleared the Senate, had virtually no chance of becoming law because it would eventually need to be signed by Trump himself. But it represented both a test of GOP loyalty to the president and a marker for how much leeway the Republican-controlled Senate is willing to give Trump to use the military abroad. Republican angst over his recent foreign policy moves — especially threats of using military force to seize Greenland from a NATO ally — is still running high in Congress.
Two Republicans reconsider
Hawley, who helped advance the war powers resolution last week, said Trump’s message during a phone call was that the legislation “really ties my hands.” The senator said he had a follow-up phone call with Secretary of State Marco Rubio Monday and was told “point blank, we’re not going to do ground troops.”
The senator added that he also received assurances that the Trump administration will follow constitutional requirements if it becomes necessary to deploy troops again to the South American country.
“We’re getting along very well with Venezuela,” Trump told reporters at a ceremony for the signing of an unrelated bill Wednesday.
As senators went to the floor for the vote Wednesday evening, Young also told reporters he was no longer in support. He said that he had extensive conversations with Rubio and received assurances that the secretary of state will appear at a public hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Young also shared a letter from Rubio that stated the president will “seek congressional authorization in advance (circumstances permitting)” if he engaged in “major military operations” in Venezuela.
The senators also said his efforts were also instrumental in pushing the administration to release Wednesday a 22-page Justice Department memo laying out the legal justification for the snatch-and-grab operation against Maduro.
That memo, which was heavily redacted, indicates that the administration, for now, has no plans to ramp up military operations in Venezuela.
“We were assured that there is no contingency plan to engage in any substantial and sustained operation that would amount to a constitutional war,” according to the memo signed by Assistant Attorney General Elliot Gaiser.
Trump’s shifting rationale for military intervention
Trump has used a series of legal arguments for his campaign against Maduro.
As he built up a naval force in the Caribbean and destroyed vessels that were allegedly carrying drugs from Venezuela, the Trump administration tapped wartime powers under the global war on terror by designating drug cartels as terrorist organizations.
The administration has claimed the capture of Maduro himself was actually a law enforcement operation, essentially to extradite the Venezuelan president to stand trial for charges in the US that were filed in 2020.
Paul criticized the administration for first describing its military build-up in Caribbean as a counternarcotics operation but now floating Venezuela’s vast oil reserves as a reason for maintaining pressure.
“The bait and switch has already happened,” he said.
Trump’s foreign policy worries Congress
Lawmakers, including a significant number of Republicans, have been alarmed by Trump’s recent foreign policy talk. In recent weeks, he has pledged that the US will “run” Venezuela for years to come, threatened military action to take possession of Greenland and told Iranians protesting their government that ” help is on its way.”
Senior Republicans have tried to massage the relationship between Trump and Denmark, a NATO ally that holds Greenland as a semi-autonomous territory. But Danish officials emerged from a meeting with Vance and Rubio Wednesday saying a “fundamental disagreement” over Greenland remains.
“What happened tonight is a roadmap to another endless war,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said at a news conference following the vote.
More than half of US adults believe President Donald Trump has “gone too far” in using the US military to intervene in other countries, according to a new AP-NORC poll.
House Democrats have also filed a similar war powers resolution and can force a vote on it as soon as next week.
How Republican leaders dismissed the bill
Last week’s procedural vote on the war powers resolution was supposed to set up hours of debate and a vote on final passage. But Republican leaders began searching for a way to defuse the conflict between their members and Trump as well as move on quickly to other business.
Once Hawley and Young changed their support for the bill, Republicans were able to successfully challenge whether it was appropriate when the Trump administration has said US troops are not currently deployed in Venezuela.
“We’re not currently conducting military operations there,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune in a floor speech. “But Democrats are taking up this bill because their anti-Trump hysteria knows no bounds.”
Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, who has brought a series of war powers resolutions this year, accused Republicans of burying a debate about the merits of an ongoing campaign of attacks and threats against Venezuela.
“If this cause and if this legal basis were so righteous, the administration and its supporters would not be afraid to have this debate before the public and the United States Senate,” he said in a floor speech.
