"Last year Morgan Tsvangirai challenged President Mugabe in the presidential election in Zimbabwe and unbiased international observers believed that Tsvangirai had scored a clear and decisive victory. When the Mugabe government tabulated the results, however, they showed that the incumbent president, Robert Mugabe, had been re-elected. This decision was widely condemned and articles appeared throughout the world claiming that the election had been stolen from Tsvangirai.

  Later in the year, members of IAPC worldwide voted to award Morgan Tsvangirai our Democracy Medal, which is presented annually to the person members believe contributed most to furthering the cause of democracy in the previous year. The medal was presented in absentia to Tsvangirai at our annual conference in Rio de Janeiro in November.

  We were shocked to learn that Tsvangirai and some associates had been arrested and were now on trial for plotting to assassinate President Mugabe. What particularly disturbs us is that the main witness against Tsvangirai is a controversial figure named Ari Ben Menashe, who claims Tsvangirai attempted to enlist his aid in a plot to kill President Mugabe.

  We have learned that Ben Menashe's firm, Dickens & Madson of Canada, was on President Mugabe's payroll long before he met with Tsvangirai and, according to O'Dwyer's PR Daily, an authoritative chronicle of public affairs and advertising contracts, has received $400,000 from the Mugabe government. Ben Menashe has described himself as a political consultant but he is neither a member of IAPC nor, to the best of our knowledge, any other association for political professionals. Our membership in Canada is unfamiliar with him other than as a name from controversial news articles over a decade ago.

  The directors of IAPC are concerned that the trial may be a means of eliminating Tsvangirai as a viable political opponent to the Mugabe government. We urge media organizations throughout the world to examine the facts to determine whether the government of Zimbabwe is justified in putting Tsvangirai and his associates on trial for their lives."

International Association of Political Consultants (IAPC)

Washington

12 February 2003