Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has registered as a candidate in Zimbabwe's 29 March elections, facing a challenge from a former ally who has vowed to make the crumbling economy the focus of the campaign.
Mr Mugabe is seeking another five-year term to extend his 28-year rule of the once-prosperous southern African country.
Rivals say his re-election would be a disaster for Zimbabweans who are suffering amid an economic meltdown, highlighted yesterday when Zimbabwe said annualised inflation topped 66,000% in December - a new record.
Millions of Zimbabweans are expected to vote in the presidential, parliamentary and municipal polls.
Mr Mugabe and his opponents have described the event as a landmark election in the country's post-independence period.
'We're very confident of victory, 99.9% confident,' Emerson Mnangagwa, a cabinet minister and official with the ruling ZANU-PF party, said.
The opposition is concerned the elections will not be free. Mr Mugabe has been widely accused of rigging the last three major elections and of using security forces to quell dissent.
Earlier this week Robert Mugabe, who turns 84 next week, told state media that he was raring to go into the election.
But Mr Mugabe must contend with Simba Makoni, a renegade former finance minister who is running for president as an independent.
The ZANU-PF expelled Mr Makoni, 58, earlier this week after he announced what many observers consider the most serious challenge to the veteran Zimbabwean leader, who has been in power since independence from Britain in 1980.
Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the main faction of the Movement for Democratic Change, the country's largest opposition party, will also contest the presidential election.
The leader of a smaller faction of the MDC has pulled out of the race and is expected to back Mr Makoni.
Mr Makoni's entry could split the opposition vote and spur Mr Mugabe's re-election in spite of the nation's economic misery.
William Gwata of the little-known Christian Democratic party also filed a nomination form, declaring his intentions to run.
