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MDC rejects Zanu PF victory, vows defiance
By
MacDonald
Dzirutwe
ZIMBABWE President
Robert Mugabe's party has scored an overwhelming win in a disputed parliamentary
election, seizing the two-thirds majority it needs to ram through constitutional
changes at will.
The opposition rejected the result and joined Western governments in denouncing the poll as a fraud, saying Mugabe had stolen his third election in five years.
"We have rejected the results because we don't believe they reflect the will of the people," said Morgan Tsvangirai, who leads the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), on Saturday.
Police warned the opposition they would crush any violent reaction to Mugabe's victory.
Final results showed Mugabe's ZANU-PF party took 78 of 120 contested seats against 41 for the MDC. One independent, purged former Information Minister Jonathan Moyo, was also elected.
Mugabe, who has ruled for 25 years, by law will appoint 30 additional members of the 150-seat legislature, boosting ZANU-PF's majority well past the two-thirds mark.
The MDC, once seen as the biggest challenge to Mugabe since independence from Britain in 1980, saw a net loss of 10 seats.
Tsvangirai has said the election was marked by fraud, fear and intimidation -- an assessment echoed by the United States, Britain and other Western nations.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice accused Mugabe of policies "designed to repress, crush and otherwise stifle expressions of differences in Zimbabwe."
Tsvangirai, who has accused Mugabe, 81, of rigging previous elections in 2000 and 2002, hinted on Friday his supporters might take their anger to the streets rather than attempting to fight the result in court.
On Saturday, the opposition leader said strategy was still being discussed. "We will consult with the people on a plan to seek redress," he told a news conference.
Police vowed to suppress any post-poll violence and were setting up checkpoints on highways and patrolling streets in the towns and cities.
Mugabe has dismissed criticism of the election, which he said was as free and fair as any in the world. On Saturday he urged the MDC to accept defeat gracefully.
"The losing side must not look at it as the end of the world and must be sporting enough to accept defeat and not look for all kinds of excuses that might complicate relations," he told reporters at his official State House in Harare.
| "There's something wrong with a constitution that can give only the ruling party a two-thirds majority" |
| PROF JONATHAN MOYO |
Analysts say ZANU-PF could use its majority to push through constitutional changes to protect Mugabe from the kind of prosecutions that have plagued some other African leaders when they stepped down. Mugabe is due to retire in 2008.
Moyo, a former close Mugabe aide who prior to his ouster this year helped design strict new media and security laws, said the vote exposed flaws in the country's democracy--a reference to the 30 seats filled by presidential appointees.
"There's something wrong with a constitution that can give only the ruling party a two-thirds majority," Moyo told Reuters in his southern Tsholotsho constituency.
Critics accuse Mugabe of ruining once-prosperous Zimbabwe by a chaotic seizure of white farms for landless blacks and economic mismanagement which has brought huge inflation, unemployment and food and fuel shortages.
Mugabe accuses his Western critics of sabotaging the economy and had demanded an overwhelming ZANU-PF victory to see off the challenge from the MDC, which he pillories as a British puppet.
The MDC says the electoral process favoured ZANU-PF and the 5.78 million-strong voting roll was inflated with 1 million "ghost voters". It also questioned why tens of thousands of people were turned away from polling stations.
Regional observers from the Southern African Development Community (SADC), who had been expected to give the poll a clean bill of health, expressed concerns over the thwarted voters.
"It is still not clear to us exactly how many people were affected in this way as well as the reason for them not being able to cast their votes," the group said.
South Africa's observer team however said the polls met regional democratic standards.
Campaigning and
voting were generally free of the violence that marred parliamentary
polls in 2000 and Mugabe's re-election in 2002. The conduct of those
votes is at the root of Mugabe's international isolation - Reuters
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