Rigging fears rise in Zim
2008-04-01 17:17
Special Report
Four Chinese men face deportation from Zimbabwe after they were arrested for killing more than 40 tortoises for meat, a report says.
A dusty road leads to the village of Wedza, where veterans of Zimbabwe's liberation war eke out a meagre living on their farm cooperative, which after a promising start now brings only despair.
Harare - Rigging fears were increasing in Zimbabwe on Tuesday three days after the electoral commission failed to release results from the presidential vote, in which the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) claims to have ousted authoritarian President Robert Mugabe.
Only partial results from the parliamentary elections that were held concomitantly with presidential and local elections on Saturday had been released, showing the opposition enjoying a slight lead over Mugabe's Zanu-PF party.
With more than half the 210 seats in the House of Assembly (lower house of parliament) counted, Zanu-PF had 64 seats against 67 for the MDC.
Of the MDC vote 62 went to Tsvangirai's larger faction of the divided party and 5 for a smaller, breakaway MDC faction led by Arthur Mutambara.
'We'll not stand for it'
The slow pace of the announcement of official results, which the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) attributed to logistical difficulties, had stoked MDC suspicions that the state-controlled election body was trying to buy time while it "fixes" the result in Mugabe's favour.
"We will not stand for it," Eddie Cross, an MDC MP in Bulawayo, who retained his seat, said.
The MDC staked its victory claim hours after the close of polls, saying that unofficial results posted at some of the around 9 000 polling stations nationwide gave Tsvangirai and the party a 60% victory.
A parallel count of a sample of votes by the independent Zimbabwe Election Support Network also puts longtime opposition leader Tsvangirai in the lead, albeit without an outright majority.
ZESN estimated Tsvangirai would take 49.2% of the vote against 41.8% for Mugabe and 8.2% for a third candidate, former finance minister Simba Makoni, who ran as an independent.
EU urges Zim to release results
If correct, the estimate, which contained a margin of error of 2.4%, could force Tsvangirai into a runoff against Mugabe, as called for by the constitution if no candidate took more than 50%.
As the results continued to trickle in, international pressure grew on the electoral commission to end the tension caused by the wait.
The United States, European Union, Britain, Germany and the Netherlands all called for the results to be released without delay.
"The opportunities for mischief increase the longer the delay is between the elections and the announcement of the vote," said US State Department deputy spokesperson Tom Casey.
In neighbouring South Africa, home to between one and three million refugees from Zimbabwe's economic meltdown, a spokesperson for trade union, Cosatu, expressed concern that the "clear evidence" of a strong MDC showing was not reflected in the official results so far.
Sapa-dpa
- SAPA