Mugabe set to battle former ally

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe registered yesterday as a candidate in a March 29 election, facing a challenge from a former ally who has vowed to make the crumbling economy the campaign's focus.

Robert Mugabe is seeking another five-year term to extend his 28-year rule of the once-prosperous southern African country.

Rivals say his re-election would be a disaster for Zimbabweans who are suffering from an economic meltdown, highlighted on Thursday when Zimbabwe said annualised inflation topped 66,000 per cent in December - a new record.

Millions of Zimbabweans are expected to vote in presidential, parliamentary and municipal polls. Mr Mugabe, who turns 84 next week, and his opponents have described the event as a landmark election in the country's post-independence period.

"We're very confident of victory, 99.9 per cent confident," Emerson Mnangagwa, a Cabinet minister and official with the ruling Zanu-PF party, told reporters after presenting Mr Mugabe's election registration papers to a court in Harare.

The opposition is concerned the elections will not be free. Mr Mugabe has been widely accused of rigging the last three major elections and of using security forces to quell dissent.

Earlier this week Mr Mugabe told state media that he was "raring to go" into the election.

But Mr Mugabe, who was described as a "discredited dictator" on Thursday by US President George W. Bush, must contend with Simba Makoni, a renegade former Finance Minister who is running for President as an independent.

The Zanu-PF expelled Mr Makoni, 58, earlier this week after he announced what many observers consider the most serious challenge to the veteran Zimbabwean leader, who has been in power since independence from Britain in 1980.

Mr Makoni, accompanied by his wife, filed his registration papers at the court in Harare yestedray.

Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the main faction of the Movement for Democratic Change, the country's largest opposition party, also filed yesterday to contest the presidential election, although he did not do so in person.

The leader of a smaller faction of the MDC, who has pulled out of the race, backed Mr Makoni.

"I am here today to announce to Zimbabweans that our political party has decided that, in pursuit of national interests, we are endorsing the presidential bid by Simba Makoni," Arthur Mutambara, leader of the group that split from Tsvangirai's main faction in 2005, told reporters. "Makoni has shown courage by standing up to Mugabe."

Mr Makoni was, however, quick to deny reports he had forged a formal alliance with the MDC faction.

"I'm not in alliance with anyone, I'm standing as an independent," he told reporters.

It was not immediately clear how many people had registered as independent candidates for the parliamentary and council elections around the country, but officials in Mr Makoni's camp suggest over 150 people both from ZANU-PF and the MDC had joined their ranks.

Analysts had previously said that Mr Makoni's entry could split the opposition and spur Mr Mugabe's re-election.

Critics say government mismanagement has plunged the country into a crisis that is marked by soaring poverty, widespread malnutrition and chronic food and fuel shortages.

Mr Mugabe says the problems are the result of sabotage by Western powers who are opposed to his policy of seizing white-owned farms and redistributing the land to blacks.

Despite accusations of widespread human rights violations, Mr Mugabe is regarded in much of Africa as an anti-colonial champion and hero of the liberation era of the 1960s and 1970s.