ZEC, government attack MDC victory claim

ZEC, government attack MDC victory claim

• Tsvangirai candidates sweep Bulawayo

• MDC pre-empts ZEC, claims victory

• Voting ends, opposition predicts victory

• African observers allege fraud in Zim poll

• Bomb explodes at Zanu PF candidate's home

• Mugabe votes, says will accept defeat

• Large queues as voting gets underway

• Zimbabweans go to the polls

• Zimbabwe election facts

• Man escapes jail for 'axing' Mugabe poster

• Gugulethu Moyo: All to play for

• Langton Towungana: one who dared

• Presidential poll winner needs 51 percent - ZEC

THE Zimbabwe government and the body overseeing the country’s general elections rapped the country's main opposition party on Sunday for claiming victory even before any results had been announced.

"The commission notes with concern that some stakeholders have gone on to announce purported results of the poll when in fact the results are being verified and collated," Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) chief elections officer Lovemore Sekeramayi said in a statement.

"Those results are not official results of the poll. The official results will be announced to the nation by the commission and it urges the nation to bear with it while it completes the process of collation and verification."

Officials said they would begin announcing results of the presidential, parliamentary and local polls on Sunday. Voting ended at 7PM on Saturday.

Zimbabwe's security forces, which have thrown their backing firmly behind Mugabe, said before the election they would not allow a victory declaration before counting was complete.

"I leave ZEC to deal with the technical issues which [Morgan] Tsvangirai (MDC leader) is raising, but in respect of his threats to usurp the powers of ZEC by turning the MDC into an electoral commission, I hope Tsvangirai is in full charge of his faculties," government spokesman George Charamba told the state-owned Sunday Mail.

"How will it play? He announces results, declares himself and MDC the winner and then what? Declare himself the president of Zimbabwe? 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.

The statements came after the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) held a press conference in which its secretary-general Tendai Biti said the party had "won this election beyond any reasonable doubt".

Biti based his statement on partial unofficial results collated at polling stations where counting had been completed.

The MDC also said that the ZEC, a theoretically independent body whose executives are appointed by President Robert Mugabe, was not to be trusted.

Sekeramayi, however, said patience was needed while the process to count the results from Saturday's joint presidential, parliamentary and council elections was completed.

"Zimbabwe, we will come back to you with the official results in due course and we urge all stakeholders to be patient and wait for the exercise to be completed," he said.

"We wish to commend the nation for a peaceful and tranquil electoral process. Counting of results commenced last night and as I speak, the results of all the four elections are being collated and will be announced as and when they are received."

Mugabe, in power since independence from Britain in 1980, faced 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 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.

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.

Biti said the MDC's election agents had reported that early results showed Tsvangirai was projected to win 66 percent of the vote in the capital Harare, an opposition stronghold.

He said Tsvangirai had made significant inroads in 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 on Sunday. Critics say the SADC, which has tried to mediate over Zimbabwe, is too soft on Mugabe.

If no candidate wins more than 51 percent of the vote, the election will go into a second round. - Reuters/AFP/Staff Reporter
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