Cape Town — Zimbabwe's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) claims that its leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, has won an outright victory in the country's presidential elections. But it says that if the official election commission forces a second round run-off, it will nevertheless take part.
At a news conference in Harare Tuesday afternoon, MDC secretary-general Tendai Biti said the MDC's figures, which came directly from polling stations, showed that Tsvangirai won 50.3 percent of Saturday's vote and President Robert Mugabe 43.8 percent.
The MDC called the news conference, a live broadcast of which was monitored in South Africa, after the official Zimbabwe Electoral Commission had failed, four days after the election, to release the presidential election results.
Biti said the number of votes cast was 2,382,243. Tsvangirai won 1,171,079 votes, Mugabe 1,043,349 and independent challenger Simba Makoni 167,815, or seven percent of the total.
In the parliamentary election, the MDC had won 99 seats (representing 48 percent of the vote), Zanu PF 96 seats and the MDC faction headed by Arthur Mutambara 11 seats. In addition, he said the MDC expected to win another three seats in bye-elections and to work with independent candidate Jonathan Moyo.
Biti called on Mugabe to concede the presidency. Referring to The Herald newspaper in Harare, he said it appeared the state media were preparing the public for a second round run-off of the presidential election. (A candidate has to secure 50 percent of the vote-plus-one to be elected.)
But going to a second round would be "delaying the inevitable," Biti said. He noted that many of the 5.9 million registered voters had stayed away from the polls on Saturday. He suggested that they would join another round, giving Tsvangirai an even bigger victory. However, the MDC would, "without prejudice to our position," take part if there was a run-off.
He also claimed the results "debunked the often-stated myth that the country has a political divide between the rural areas and the urban areas… These results show that everyone in Zimbabwe is ready for change."
