By Cris Chinaka
BEITBRIDGE, Zimbabwe (Reuters) - President Robert Mugabedismissed his two challengers in next month's Zimbabweanelections as a lightweight and a Western puppet on Saturday.
In a rally to mark his 84th birthday and launch hiscampaign for another five-year term, Mugabe said his rulingZANU-PF party would win the March 29 votes resoundingly.
Former Finance Minister Simba Makoni, who says he has thesupport of a number of ZANU-PF officials, is standing againstMugabe in the presidential contest.
"He is like a frog trying to inflate itself up to the sizeof an ox. It will burst," Mugabe told thousands of partyactivists in a dusty sports field in Beitbridge on the SouthAfrican border.
Mugabe also lashed out at Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader ofthe largest faction of Zimbabwe's main opposition party, theMovement for Democratic Change (MDC), describing him as a"puppet" of former colonial power Britain and the UnitedStates.
Mugabe's government has accused the two Western nations andtheir allies of using sanctions to undermine and sabotageZimbabwe's economy, which is in crisis with inflation of morethan 100,000 percent, unemployment at more than 80 percent, andchronic food and fuel shortages.
"It is the sanctions that they have imposed which havecaused a great deal of harm on the economy," Mugabe said. Heexpected he and his party would win "resoundingly" in thepresidential, parliamentary and municipal elections.
DIVIDED OPPOSITION
Tsvangirai, a former union leader who has come closest toousting Mugabe in previous elections, told thousands ofsupporters at a rally that Zimbabweans were ready to end theMugabe era and hand the MDC power.
"We remain the legitimate voice of democratic change inthis country," Tsvangirai said in a stadium in Mutare, some 265km (165 miles) east of the capital Harare.
"All of Zimbabwe is in the custody of a dictatorship. We'reall 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 governmentcrackdown on anti-Mugabe activists, divisions within its ranksand Makoni's emergence.
Tsvangirai and Makoni could divide the anti-Mugabe vote andhand victory to the veteran leader, who has been in power sinceindependence from Britain in 1980.
The MDC leader, who accuses Mugabe of rigging pastelections, has refused to run a joint campaign with Makoni anda splinter MDC group has thrown its weight behind the formerfinance minister.
Both opposition candidates are campaigning on a platform ofending Zimbabwe's economic crisis which they and Westernnations blame on government mismanagement and policies such asthe seizure of thousands of white-owned farms.
Tsvangirai raised the prospect that a new government couldwin help from the international community to rebuild Zimbabwe'seconomy.
"Robert Mugabe is one of the greatest tyrants of the 21stcentury, when we bring him down, they will be there to help us,I can assure you of this," he said.
(Additional reporting by MacDonald Dzirutwe in Mutare andNelson Banya in Harare; Editing by Paul Simao and RobertWoodward)
