Zimbabwe ambassador hits Clinton over Mugabe remarks

May 27, 2008, 9:30 p.m. - Zimbabwean Ambassador to the United States Machivenyika Mapuranga today fired back at comments made by American presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton, who compared the Democratic Party's discounted primaries in Florida and Michigan to the re-election results of President Robert Mugabe.

Mapuranga said Clinton's comparison was made "out of ignorance or malice" and do not "tally with the facts."

"There were four presidential candidates and none of them attained the requisite threshold of 50 percent plus 1 votes," Mapuranga told Redding News Review. "The Electoral Act provides that in that event there must be a run-off between the two top candidates."

Clinton, who is hoping that the inclusion of vote counts from the Florida and Michigan primaries will help her win her party's nomination, said last Wednesday that it is wrong when people go through the motions of an election only to have them discarded and disregarded, according to CBS News.

"We're seeing that right now in Zimbabwe," she was reported to have told a crowd in South Florida.

"Tragically, an election was held, the President [Mugabe] lost, they refused to abide by the will of the people," she said.

Mugabe has accused the U.S. and Britain of a "regime change" agenda and has called Zimbabwe's opposition party leader Morgan Tsvangirai, a puppet for Western interests.

Zimbabwe's opposition party, Movement for Democratic Change or MDC, won a majority of parliament seats and faces a presidential runoff against Mugabe on June 27, the electoral commission said.

Tsvangirai returned to Zimbabwe from South Africa over the weekend and said that there is an effort to eliminate key party members leading up to the scheduled run-off.

Zimbabwe's state-run Herald newspaper reported Monday that Mugabe will accept the results if he loses.

"The 29th March 2008 election resulted in the ruling party (ZANU-PF) winning 97 seats, and the opposition party (MDC) winning 99 seats, as declared by the independent electoral commission," Mapuranga said. "If Sen. Hillary Clinton was not aware of these facts, her ignorance can be excused considering the stressful situation she is in because of her faltering campaign; but if she was aware of the facts, we can only conclude that this is yet another of her misspoken utterances."