Mugabe’s ruling party plans disrupting Zimbabwe oppn

Bloomberg

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s ruling party is discussing using a press clampdown and intimidation in rural areas to thwart a newly united opposition’s challenge to its three-decade rule in elections next year, according to three senior officials with knowledge of the matter.
Officials of the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front are increasingly concerned the health of Mugabe, 93, may undermine his campaign and alternative candidates would struggle to beat a coalition of parties united behind opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change, according to the members of the party’s politburo who asked not to be identified because the discussions haven’t been made public.
Among the methods being discussed are police clampdowns on opposition rallies and using state-controlled media to target opposition figures for alleged misbehavior in their private lives and alleged meetings with western diplomats, the officials said. No final decision has been taken on more violent tactics that were evident in the 2008 election, when the U.S. State Department said about 200 MDC supporters died, or softer propaganda tactics used in 2013, they said. “I’m skeptical about the use of 2008 tactics; they know these tactics rob them of legitimacy and peer approval,” Alex Magaisa, a U.K.-based law lecturer and one of the architects of Zimbabwe’s 2013 constitution, said by phone from Harare, the capital.