President of Zimbabwe, 91-year-old Robert Mugabe has read out the wrong speech at the opening of the country’s parliament on Tuesday.
Before the reading of the speech, opposition party members of parliament were said to have been warned through text messages delivered to their phones not to disrupt proceedings.
Tensions between the president’s party, Zanu-PF, and the opposition led by the Movement for Democratic Change were said to be high prior to the speech.
The BBC reports that the national broadcaster cancelled the live feed of the speech when it was discovered that the president was reading the same speech that he gave on August 25 during the state-of-the-nation address.
In the speech, the president was said to have alluded to efforts made in amending labour legislation to protect workers, achievements in agriculture and tourism, and measures taken to stimulate foreign direct investment.
Presidential spokesman George Charamba told the state-run newspaper that the mix-up was the fault of the secretarial office of the president, stating that the error was “sincerely regretted”.
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