Mugabe’s Zanu-PF wins at least a two-thirds majority, say tallies

Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party has won at least a two-thirds majority in parliament, according to a tally released last night by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission.

With more than 180 seats declared by the electoral commission, Zanu-PF had won 142 seats in the 210-member lower chamber, which is enough to amend the country’s new constitution.

The announcement came shortly after Zanu-PF’s political revivals, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party, said they would not recognise the disputed election. The MDC maintains the election was rigged by Zanu-PF.

African observers yesterday stopped short of declaring the crucial election a fair contest, saying more information on the alleged irregularities was needed before a final pronouncement could be made.

The MDC and local election observers maintain that Zanu-PF stole the election primarily by manipulating the voters’ roll to disenfranchise nearly one million people.

Zanu-PF has rubbished the claim as “hogwash”, saying the poll was the most credible to be held on the African continent.

Speaking in an interview with South Africa’s state broadcaster SABC, Zanu-PF spokesperson Psychology Maziwisa said it would be unfair to judge the election using perfection as a standard.

“You’ve got to look at circumstances objectively and I think if you look at the situation here, what prevailed on July 31st, if you look at it objectively, I think you can only come to one conclusion . . . that it [the election] was free, that it was fair, that it was credible.”

Another Zanu-PF spokesman, Rugaro Gumbo, predicted Mr Mugabe, who is 89 and running for a seventh term as president, would get at least 70 per cent of the vote in the presidential race.

Vote-counting complete
The ZEC announced that vote-counting in the presidential poll was complete, and results were being collated, but it is not expected to officially announce the result until Monday.

The MDC held an emergency meeting yesterday afternoon to discuss what action it would take.

“There are all sorts of ideas coming up, but we are meeting to strategise. It’s clear that the election was a sham and we have rejected the results. The national executive of the party will also meet tomorrow [Saturday] on the same subject,” MDC spokesperson Douglas Mwonzora said.

The Southern African Development Community said that while Zimbabwe's disputed election was free, and passed off without violence, it was too early to declare it as fair.

'Free election'

“We have said this election is free, indeed very free,” the Southern African regional bloc top election observer Bernard Membe said. “We did not say it was fair... we didn’t want to jump to a conclusion at this point in time,” he added.

Speaking in the capital Harare yesterday, Mr Obasanjo, Nigeria's former president, who had been tasked with leading the African Union observer mission, said the elections were fair and free "from the campaigning point of view".

However, he added that observers had noted “incidences that could have been avoided and even tended to have breached the law.”

The mission is asking election authorities to investigate the allegations that large numbers of eligible voters were turned away from polling stations during Wednesday’s vote.