Ending months of uncertainty, Zimbabwe set the date for a presidential election on Wednesday, raising the prospect of a fight again between strongman contender Emmerson Mnangagwa and opposition candidate Nelson Chamisa.
The government’s official record gazette said elections for the president, national assembly and local government would be held on August 23.
Eighty-year-old Mnangagwa, who replaced strongman Robert Mugabe after a military-led coup in 2017, heads the ruling ZANU-PF party, which has been in power since independence in 1980.
His main challenger is Nelson Chamisa, a 45-year-old lawyer and pastor who leads the recently formed Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) party and was defeated by Mnangagwa in 2018.
Analysts are preparing for a tense vote in a country where discontent over deep poverty, power cuts and other shortages runs deep.
Rights groups and opposition parties have complained of repression ahead of the vote.
After the election date was revealed, the CCC urged supporters to register to vote.
“This is an important step in acknowledging your role in shaping the future of our country,” the party said on Twitter.
In 2018, Mnangagwa, nicknamed the “crocodile” for his political cunning, won an election marred by violence with 50.8 percent of the vote.
The result was denounced as a fraud by Chamisa, who led the Movement for Democratic Change Alliance (MDC-Alliance) at the time.
The ruling party won 145 of the 210 contested seats in the lower house, the National Assembly, which is directly elected on a first-past-the-post basis.
The MDC-coalition got 63 seats, and two seats were taken by independents.
Another 60 seats are reserved for women appointed through the party-list system of proportional representation.
The Senate consists of 80 members with 60 appointed through proportional representation, 18 traditional chiefs who are generally loyal to ZANU-PF, and two representatives of people with disabilities.
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