Staff ReporterZimbabwe’s Zanu-PF youth league has reportedly taken issue with plans to increase the presidential age limit to 55 years, vowing to resist the move and calling it a “selfish and evil plot”.
Zimbabwe’s constitution currently allows people aged 40 and older to stand for presidential office.
The ruling party sought to raise the presidential age limit “to ensure only mature people contest for the highest office in the land”.
Zanu-PF lawmakers claimed that the leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) Alliance, Nelson Chamisa, aged 40, “proved to be highly immature in his handling of defeat”.
Zanu-PF National Secretary for Security, Lovemore Matuke, accused Chamisa of childish tactics and actions after he lost to President Emmerson Mnangagwa.
In the July 30 poll, the ruling Zanu-PF party won a more than two-thirds majority in the 210-seat parliament, giving it sweeping powers to amend the constitution.
But, the privately-owned New Zimbabwe has quoted the Zanu-PF youth league political commissar Godfrey Tsenengamu, saying they would engage with the ruling party leadership about the proposed amendments.
Tsenengamu has described the proposed amendments as a punishment against “innocent generations”, saying that it was alien to “Zanu-PF and it won’t see the light of the day.”
He said people did not vote according to age, but for a “progressive leader”. The proposed amendment was likely to hurt the party in the future when it has a younger leader who would not be able to contest for presidency, he said
