Sanctions as a tool to abet regime change in Zimbabwe have failed dismally as shown by Zanu-PF’s resounding victory in recent elections and Westerners should immediately remove their ruinous punitive embargoes, President Robert Mugabe declared.
Addressing the 68th Session of the United Nations General Assembly yesterday, Mugabe rapped Britain and the United States for advocating relative democracy but refusing to accept the widely hailed harmonized elections.
President Mugabe trounced MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai with 61.09 percent of the presidential vote to 33.94 with the other three presidential aspirants sharing the remaining 4.97 percent. Mugabe’s Zanu-PF clinched 160 seats out of the 210 National Assembly constituencies to get a crushing 76 percent dominance.
After factoring in 60 women’s quota seats elected by proportional representation of six for each of the country’s 10 provinces, the final composition of the 270 member National Assembly comes to 197 seats for Zanu-PF, 70 for MDC-T, two for MDC, and one independent, giving Zanu-PF just under 73 percent of the total seats in the National Assembly, well over the two-thirds majority of 180 seats.
“If these sanctions were imposed to effect illegal regime change, well, the results of the recent national elections have clearly shown what they can do,” Mugabe said.
“Moreover, these illegal sanctions continue to inflict economic deprivation and human suffering on all Zimbabweans.
“In the eyes of our people, the sanctions constitute a form of hostility and violence against them for the simple crime of undertaking the land reform program by which land was put in the hands of the majority landless Zimbabweans.”
The decade-long sanctions regime, he said, violated provisions of the U.N. Charter on State sovereignty and non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign States.
Mugabe rapped Western powers for their habitual intimidation of Zimbabwe in a bid to control its resources.
“Our small and peaceful country is threatened daily by covetous and bigoted big powers whose hunger for domination of other nations and their resources has no bounds,” he said.
“Shame, shame, shame to the United States of America. Shame, shame, shame to Britain and its allies. Zimbabwe is for Zimbabweans, so are its resources. Please remove your illegal and filthy sanctions on my country.”
Mugabe denounced the Western countries for their hypocritical tendencies of preaching democracy they never practice in their backyards.
Zimbabwe, he said, refused to be lectured on democracy and freedom by such duplicitous countries.
“We are preached to daily by the West on the virtues of democracy and freedom they do not totally espouse,” he said.
“Zimbabwe took up arms to precisely achieve our freedom and democracy. Yet we have been punished by the United States through the odious Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act enacted in 2001 to effect regime change in the country.
“Zimbabwe, however, refuses that these Western detractors define democracy and freedom. We paid the ultimate price for it and we shall never relinquish our sovereignty! As we have repeatedly asserted, Zimbabwe will never be a colony again.”
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