Mugabe pledges electoral reforms

President Robert Mugabe said on Tuesday Zimbabwe would implement wide-ranging electoral reforms before next year's parliamentary elections.
"On the basis of both the national debate and, of course, our experiences in running elections since 1980, government is proposing far-reaching reforms to our electoral law," he said in a speech officially opening a new session of parliament
It was Mugabe's first public comment on electoral changes promised by his ruling ZANU-PF party promised last month and largely welcomed by the opposition as paving the way for free and fair elections.
Mugabe, at the centre of a political storm over his disputed re-election two years ago and his ruling ZANU-PF party's equally controversial victory in June 2000 parliamentary polls, urged the opposition to co-operate to enact the new electoral law.
He said reforms would include setting up an independent election commission, a single day of voting instead of two, and counting of votes at polling centres - all conditions which the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has demanded as crucial for a fair poll.
An unusually conciliatory Mugabe, who normally peppers his political speeches with attacks on the MDC which he calls a puppet of former colonial master Britain, - studiously avoided name-calling, and MDC legislators, who have boycotted some of his addresses, listened to him quietly.
But MDC deputies, who occupy a third of Zimbabwe's 150-member parliament, did not join ruling party members in giving Mugabe the traditional applause at the end of his 25-minute remarks.
The president said the new electoral law, which must be approved by a two-thirds of members of parliament, would need the co-operation of all political forces to pass.
"These proposed changes will need your collective deliberation and judgement so they become part of the law of our land," he said.
Mugabe, 80 and in power since independence in 1980, said his government had adopted policies to revive an economy languishing in its worst state in decades.
Critics say he has run down one of Africa's most promising economies through controversial policies, including the seizure of white-owned farms for landless blacks.
But Mugabe says the economy is a victim of sabotage by domestic and Western opponents seeking his overthrow.