PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe has made an impassioned plea at the opening of parliament for deeply divided Zimbabweans to build "bridges of amity, forgiveness, trust and togetherness", while glossing over mounting reports of rights violations by police and militias loyal to him.
With his wife Grace sitting on an elaborate chair next to him and dressed in a frothy white turban and royal blue gown, Mr Mugabe, 85, said Zimbabwe was ready to put old hostilities aside.
"Let us be a Zimbabwe united in body, mind and spirit. On
ly that way can we really succeed," he said in comments far- removed from his usual anti- imperialist vitriol.
But prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai, the former opposition leader who many believe was the true winner in last year's elections, sat stony-faced on the benches below the couple, showing the scepticism with which many in his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) will view the president's words.
Yesterday's pomp-filled ceremony was the first official opening of parliament since the power-sharing government was formed in February, controversially allowing Mr Mugabe to extend his 28-year rule.
Roads in the centre of Harare were cordoned off as he and his wife arrived outside the low, white, colonial-era parliament building in a vintage black open Rolls-Royce. Air force jets flew overhead, and judges wearing white wigs and red gowns trooped into the chamber to hear the president's speech.
Pursuing his new toned-down approach, Mr Mugabe also extended an olive branch to western nations.
"Our country remains in a positive stance to enter into fresh, friendly and co-operative relations with all those countries that have been hostile to us in the past," he said.
Relations between Mr Mugabe and Mr Tsvangirai are tense: the former has made it clear he wants members of his Zanu-PF party who killed up to 200 MDC supporters in election violence to escape prosecution.
Some are even being rewarded: an army general accused of orchestrating opposition "purges" has just been appointed to the board of the state broadcaster, a move that "sends wrong and dangerous signals", the MDC claims.
On the other side of the coin, MDC MPs are being prosecuted for minor offences. A girlfriend of deputy youth minister Thamsanqa Mahlangu told a court on Monday that police had threatened to pour boiling liquid on her genitals if she refused to implicate him in the recent theft of a mobile phone from a prominent war veterans' leader.
Meanwhile, Zanu-PF militias deny food to hungry villagers in the rural Midlands province or force them to denounce the MDC before giving them handouts, rights groups say.
Nearly nine months after being sworn in, the prime minister still hasn't been able to move into his official residence in Harare, apparently after resistance from Mr Mugabe.
MDC supporters are to decide later this month whether Mr Tsvangirai should stay in the power-sharing government.
