Kholwani Nyathi and Agencies
31 March 2008
Zimbabwe's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has claimed victory in presidential elections based on preliminary results from the majority of provinces.
The results were posted at polling stations as soon as counting is done. The party says it is leading the presidential race with 67 per cent of the votes.
But, the election commission denied the MDC claims saying that it would announce results later today. The trend has been that President Robert Mugabe is a distant third having lost in his perceived strongholds.
The veteran leader was also said to have performed dismally in rural areas where he was hoping to atone for an expected poor showing in rural areas. A number of Mr Mugabe's close lieutenants had also reportedly fallen in the ruling Zanu PF's rural strongholds.
Mr Mugabe, in power since independence from Britain in 1980, faces his most formidable challenge in the election against MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai and ruling ZANU-PF party defector Simba Makoni campaigning on the collapse of Zimbabwe's economy.
Although the odds seem stacked against Mr Mugabe, 84, analysts believe he will be declared the winner, and the opposition accused him of widespread vote-rigging.
African observers say they detected fraud in Saturday's ballot.
The MDC announced at midday on Sunday that it had an unassailable lead in the presidential, parliamentary and council elections in a number of provinces.
But the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC), which the opposition is accusing of trying to rig the election in favour of Zanu PF, said vote counting was still under way and official results were only start trickling later on Sunday.
It warned the opposition against premature celebrations.
Note with regret
"We note with regret that some stakeholders have started announcing the results of the elections when counting is still in progress," the ZEC chief elections officer, Mr Lovemore Sekeremayi said in a televised press conference.
"We wish to advise the nation that it is the responsibility of the ZEC alone to issue results and that will be done as soon as the counting and verification of ballots is done."
However, impatient Zimbabweans were moving from polling station to polling station collating results and the unofficial results fuelled speculation that Mr Mugabe's government had fallen."
Word was spreading like wild fire through text messages that the ruling party was facing imminent defeat.
The final results are not expected until Monday.
The early surge by the opposition has unsettled Mr Mugabe's government, which declared today that if Mr Tsvangirai declared victory before election results were announced he would be charged for plotting a coup. Zimbabwe's security forces warned last Thursday that they will not tolerate any unofficial announcement of the results and the move by the MDC might trigger a hostile reaction.
The commanders of the army, police, intelligence services and the prison services declared that they would not recognise any opposition candidate who might beat Mr Mugabe because they were sell outs.
However, the president has said he would accept defeat but also urged the opposition to do the same if they lost.
Mr Mugabe has vowed to deal ruthlessly with any street protests and has put the country's security forces on high alert.
Mr Tendai Biti, secretary general of the MDC told diplomats and observers that early results showed the MDC was victorious. "We have won this election, we have won this election."
But, government spokesman George Charamba told the state-owned Sunday Mail: "It is called a coup d'etat and we all know how coups are handled."
Residents in the eastern opposition stronghold of Manicaland said riot police stopped a victory demonstration by about 200 MDC supporters. There was no violence, they said.
Mr Mugabe, who accuses the West of sabotaging Zimbabwe's economy, expressed confidence on Saturday he would be returned to office. "We will succeed. We will conquer," he said.
He rejected vote-rigging allegations.
Once-prosperous Zimbabwe is suffering from the world's highest inflation rate of more than 100,000 percent, chronic shortages of food and fuel, and an HIV/AIDS epidemic that has contributed to a steep decline in life expectancy.
Mr Biti said the MDC's election agents had reported that early results showed Mr Tsvangirai was projected to win 67 per cent of the vote in the capital Harare, an opposition stronghold.
He said Mr Tsvangirai had made significant inroads in President Mugabe's rural strongholds by leading in the southern province of Masvingo and Mashonaland Central Province, north of Harare, where the MDC has not won a parliamentary seat since 2000.
Observers from the Pan-African parliament said in a letter to the electoral commission they had found more than 8,000 non-existent voters registered on empty land in a Harare constituency.
Most international observers were banned and a team from the regional grouping, the Southern African Development Community (SADC), did not comment today. Critics say the SADC, which has tried to mediate over Zimbabwe, is too soft on Mugabe.
Late today, a report by Southern African observers said Zimbabwe's election was "peaceful and credible", two dissenting mission members said.
South Africa's opposition Democratic Alliance, which had two representatives on the Southern African Development Community (SADC) observer mission, said they had refused to sign the preliminary report. The DA said the SADC report had concluded that "despite a number of concerns, the elections were a peaceful and credible expression of the will of the people of Zimbabwe".
DA parliamentarian and mission member Diane Kohler Barnard said in a statement: "It is noteworthy that the words free and fair have not been used, which is the only standard with which to judge an election."
She added: "It is impossible for this deeply flawed electoral process to be viewed as a credible expression of the will of the people of Zimbabwe"
The SADC, which critics say has been too soft on President Robert Mugabe, has unsuccessfully tried to mediate an end to Zimbabwe's crisis.
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