HARARE (AFP) — Zimbabwe's long-awaited run-off election was finally set on Friday for June 27 as opposition leader and first-round winner Morgan Tsvangirai prepared to return home for his final push for power.
A fortnight after announcing the Movement for Democratic Change leader won more votes than veteran leader Robert Mugabe in an inconclusive first round, the electoral commission said the run-off would take place in six weeks' time.
Senior members of Mugabe's party meanwhile were meeting in Harare to ensure that Africa's oldest leader can secure another five-year term in office.
In a notice placed in an extraordinary government gazette, the commission announced that "a poll shall be taken on Friday, June 27, 2008, for the purpose of electing a person to the office of president."
The announcement was something of a surprise given that the commission had earlier in the week extended a deadline for the election to be held from May 23 to July 31 -- sparking fury in the ranks of the opposition.
Tsvangirai, who only reluctantly agreed to take part in the run-off as he believes he passed the 50 percent threshold in the first round on March 29, has previously said that any ballot held after May 23 would be illegitimate.
The former labour leader, currently in Northern Ireland, has been out of the country for more than a month but his party said he was lined up to return on Saturday lunchtime and would then immediately kick off his run-off campaign.
"President Tsvangirai is definitely arriving tomorrow at 1:00 pm (1100 GMT)," the party's director of information Luke Tamborinyoka told AFP.
He would first address MDC lawmakers, who now have a majority in parliament after a legislative election which also took place on March 29, in the capital Harare before heading to the main southern city of Bulawayo to address a rally.
"The rally in Bulawayo will mark the beginning of nationwide rallies in which he will be seeing victims of political violence as well as thanking the nation for voting for change on March 29," said Tamborinyoka.
Speaking in Northern Ireland, Tsvangirai said he wanted to return home as a show of solidarity with supporters who have been targeted by Mugabe's followers.
"It is because of these people that I must return to Zimbabwe, to be with our people, to lift them out of this darkness that pervades their lives," he said in a speech to liberal groups in Belfast.
"It is because of these people that we will triumph over the dictatorship of Robert Mugabe. It is because of these people that democracy will never die in Zimbabwe."
While the election itself passed off largely peacefully, the period since has been marked by increasing levels of violence and the opposition says more than 30 of its supporters have since died at the hands of Mugabe followers.
In a report released on Thursday, the London-based rights group Amnesty International said that Mugabe's supporters were forcibly recruiting youths to carry out attacks on suspected opposition supporters.
Senior members of Mugabe's party, who have already endorsed the president to stand in a run-off, were due to meet Friday to draw up their campaign strategy.
The central committee of the Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), which normally meets four times a year, was holding a special session, the first after its veteran leader was beaten at the polls for the first time since taking power at independence in 1980.
Seen as a post-colonial success story in the first decade-and-a-half after independence, Zimbabwe's economy has been in freefall since 2000 when the 84-year-old Mugabe embarked on a land reform programme which saw thousands of white-owned farms expropriated.
Eighty percent of the workforce is unemployed while the official inflation rate in February stood at 165,000 percent -- the highest in the world.
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