President Mugabe yesterday raised the pressure ahead of the Zimbabwean presidential election by labelling his challenger and former finance minister a "prostitute".

It took Mr Mugabe more than two weeks to react to Simba Makoni, who has dared to leave the ruling party and stand as a rival candidate in next month’s elections.

“I have compared him to a prostitute,” the elderly leader said, referring to Mr Makoni’s willingness to appeal to disenchanted members of the ruling ZANU(PF) party, as well as members of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.

“A prostitute could have stood (as a presidential candidate). He is saying, I have so many boyfriends, some in the MDC, some in ZANU(PF), so I can go for nomination (as a candidate). But a prostitute could have done better, because she has clients.” He and his interviewer on state television doubled up with laughter.

Mr Makoni, 57, one of the longest surviving senior members of Mr Mugabe’s party, who is not tainted with the corruption and brutality of nearly all the rest, declared he was standing against Mr Mugabe because of his “failure of leadership”. He set up a three-way race against Mr Mugabe and former national labour leader Morgan Tsvangirai, head of the other faction of the MDC, who has lost the last three national elections and is regarded as the victim of wholesale cheating by Mr Mugabe.

Mr Makoni’s defection has caused major upsets within the ruling party, triggering unprecedented signs of rebelliousness that Mr Mugabe appears to be struggling to quell. He is apparently afraid that excessively heavy-handed action would accelerate the disaffection. Most of his officials feel the distress of blackouts, water cuts, streets flowing with sewage and the worst inflation in the world as much as other Zimbabweans.

This week it was announced that inflation for the year was 100,580 percent. Six months ago it was 7,000 percent.

Mr Makoni signalled the start of his election campaign by grinning boyishly in a full-page advertisement in a critical weekly newspaper, with the motto, “Simba for the people!”

Godfrey Chanetsa, his spokesman, said he had tried to insert the same advertisement in the state-controlled stable of weeklies and dailies, but was told they were “fully booked”. Mr Mugabe’s “prostitute” slur came in a numbing hour-long interview - the first of two - on state television to mark his 84th birthday on Thursday. It was part of the North Korean-style ritual adulation staged at vast expense on February 21 virtually every year since the mid-1980s.

There were scores of advertisements inserted by bankrupt government agencies in the government-controlled radio, television and press. The main daily newspaper, the Herald, had two birthday supplements that lauded Mr Mugabe as “the collective consciousness of revolutionaries the world over”, and praised his “visionary leadership”. Each hourly news bulletin was preceded by a version of “Happy Birthday”, composed for the occasion.

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