MDC Wins Vote in Parliament, Names Lovemore Moyo as Speaker

The Zimbabwe parliament met for the first time since the controversial presidential election on Monday and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change party captured a key victory, winning the vote for the House of Assembly speaker.

With that victory the MDC, lead by Morgan Tsvangirai, placed chairman Lovemore Moyo in the role of speaker, becoming Zimbabwe’s first opposition speaker since 1980, their year of independence.

In a somewhat strange turn of events the ruling ZANU-PF party decided they would not field a candidate in the vote but rather backed a candidate of a rival MDC faction led by Arthur Mutambara. That MDC faction holds ten seats in the House and was considered a possible spoiler in the vote, something the ZANU-PF party was trying to capitalize on.

Heading into the vote the Tsvangirai-led MDC held 100 seats while the ZANU-PF party held 99 seats. The Mutambara-led MDC faction controlled ten seats and there is one Independent seat held.

The secret ballot vote favored Moyo who collected 110 votes while Paul Themba Nyathi of the MDC faction collected 98 votes. That number surprised many as it meant at last one member of the ZANU-PF party voted for Moyo.

Tsvangirai opposed the recall of the parliament, suggesting the move could jeopardize the power-sharing talks between the MDC and ZANU-PF party.

Those power-sharing talks were born from the highly contested presidential election in which President Robert Mugabe, head of the ZANU-PF party, won another term. In March Tsvangirai collected the most votes but election officials declared he had not secured a large enough majority to avoid a run-off.

With less than a week before the June vote Tsvangirai pulled out of the race after declaring Mugabe and the ZANU-PF party had been using violence to intimidate MDC supporters. Tsvangirai claimed the election was neither free nor fail and has refused to recognize Mugabe as the legitimate president.

Since the June election both sides have agreed to hold power-sharing talks, mediated by South African President Thabo Mbeki, but those talks have produced little in the way of compromise.

Click here for more World News

About YourFindit

YourFindit Community is a business, music and social networking community. It caters to individuals providing them with a wealth of tools that enable them to create their own web site within YourFindit and display their content. Members can create free profiles that include an About Me, Background and Lifestyle, Videos, Music, Blogs, Photos, their unique URL and network with other members inside the community. YourFindit provides each member the opportunity to reserve an exclusive profile displaying only ads they upload on their pages. Members have the right to sell their ad space to advertisers.

To create your profile sign up and within minutes you too can have your People profile running your ads and building your network with new members daily.

YourFindit is owned and operated by TransWorldNews, Inc.

YourFindit profile where Your space is really Your Space