MOYO ELECTED SPEAKER OF ZIMBABWEAN PARLIAMENT

Blow for Robert Mugabe as Morgan Tsvangirai's man elected Speaker
The Telegraph

Zimbabwe's president Robert Mugabe suffered a major blow to his attempts to
hold on to power when an MP from Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic
Change was elected as speaker of parliament.

By Sebastien Berger, Southern Africa Correspondent and Peta Thornycroft in
Harare

In a stunning upset Lovemore Moyo, chairman of Mr Tsvangirai's MDC faction,
defeated Paul Themba Nyathi, of the smaller MDC grouping led by Arthur
Mutambara, by 110 votes to 98.

Mr Mugabe's Zanu-PF party did not put up a candidate itself, instead
ordering its newly sworn-in MPs to support the Mutambara faction's man. Mr
Mugabe will undoubtedly have been infuriated by the result.

The indications are that Mr Mugabe had been hoping to engineer a deal with
Mr Mutambara's faction to exclude Mr Tsvangirai from a government of
national unity, and that enough of its MPs would support the government in
parliament to enable it to function.