Mugabe belittles opponents as frog and puppet

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe dismissed his two challengers in next month's Zimbabwean elections as a lightweight and a Western puppet Saturday.

In a rally to mark his 84th birthday and launch his campaign for another five-year term, Mugabe said his ruling ZANU-PF party would win the March 29 votes resoundingly.

Former Finance Minister Simba Makoni, who says he has the support of a number of ZANU-PF officials, is standing against Mugabe in the presidential contest.

"He is like a frog trying to inflate itself up to the size of an ox. It will burst," Mugabe told thousands of party activists in a dusty sports field in Beitbridge on the South African border.

Mugabe also lashed out at Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the largest faction of Zimbabwe's main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), describing him as a "puppet" of former colonial power Britain and the United States.

Mugabe's government has accused the two Western nations and their allies of using sanctions to undermine and sabotage Zimbabwe's economy, which is in crisis with inflation of more than 100,000 percent, unemployment at more than 80 percent, and chronic food and fuel shortages.

"It is the sanctions that they have imposed which have caused a great deal of harm on the economy," Mugabe said. He expected he and his party would win "resoundingly" in the presidential, parliamentary and municipal elections.

DIVIDED OPPOSITION

Tsvangirai, a former union leader who has come closest to ousting Mugabe in previous elections, told thousands of supporters at a rally that Zimbabweans were ready to end the Mugabe era and hand the MDC power.

"We remain the legitimate voice of democratic change in this country," Tsvangirai said in a stadium in Mutare, some 265 km (165 miles) east of the capital Harare.

"All of Zimbabwe is in the custody of a dictatorship. We're all bleeding, but we're marching on. We're weak with hunger, but we're stronger with anger."

The MDC has been weakened in the past year by a government crackdown on anti-Mugabe activists, divisions within its ranks and Makoni's emergence.

Tsvangirai and Makoni could divide the anti-Mugabe vote and hand victory to the veteran leader, who has been in power since independence from Britain in 1980.

The MDC leader, who accuses Mugabe of rigging past elections, has refused to run a joint campaign with Makoni and a splinter MDC group has thrown its weight behind the former finance minister.

Both opposition candidates are campaigning on a platform of ending Zimbabwe's economic crisis which they and Western nations blame on government mismanagement and policies such as the seizure of thousands of white-owned farms.

Tsvangirai raised the prospect that a new government could win help from the international community to rebuild Zimbabwe's economy.

"Robert Mugabe is one of the greatest tyrants of the 21st century, when we bring him down (Additional reporting by M