Tsvangirai suspended as MDC sweeps all Bulawayo seats

Tsvangirai suspended as MDC sweeps all Bulawayo seats

• Voter apathy hits Senate election

• Ncube plays down MDC chances as polls open

• Zimbabweans to vote in senate poll

• Priscilla Misihairabwi: The many flaws of boycott politics

• MDC split a blow to opposition politics

• Trudy Stevenson: Tsvangirai strayed from MDC vision

• J Mkobi & B Mokoena: Aborting democracy, rearing ethnicity

• Chikoko Muponde: Is Tsvangirai his own man?

• MDC split final - official

• MDC talks end in deadlock

• Tsvangirai fires fresh salvo at colleagues

• D Muleya: MDC goes down, fighting itself!

• Ncube not for turning

• Prof J Moyo: 'All Zanu PF want is geriatrics to be senators'

By Staff Reporter

ZIMBABWE'S main opposition party took an early lead in an election for the Senate, early results showed, despite a split over whether it should contest the poll that has thrown the party into crisis.

In results announced on state television on Sunday, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) swept all five seats in the Bulawayo metropolitan province although figures showed a majority had stayed at home.

Meanwhile, the MDC's deputy president and chair of the party's disciplinary committee, Gibson Sibanda, on Saturday wrote to party leader Morgan Tsvangirai suspending him from his active duties pending a disciplinary hearing into allegations of misconduct and abuse of the MDC constitution.

Tsvangirai called for a boycott of the poll, saying that to contest would lend legitimacy to a process designed to entrench the power of President Robert Mugabe and the ruling Zanu PF party.

But senior MDC leaders rejected his demand and a faction led by Secretary-General Welshman Ncube fielded 26 candidates, mostly in the southwestern Matabeleland provinces.

Ncube's camp insist Tsvangirai went against the MDC's national council -- the supreme decision making body -- which voted 33 to 31 in favour of fielding candidates in the election.

The average voter turn-out was less than 10 percent in the province but observers said the national average could be around 20 percent of the 3.2 million registered voters.

The Zimbabwe Election Support Network, a local group that fights for free and fair elections, said most people had stayed away because they were not aware of the role of the senate.

"This re-emphasises ZESN's concerns on the ill-timing of the senatorial elections which comes on the backdrop of an imploding economy and a political crisis," the group said in a statement seen by Reuters on Sunday.

Sunday's results showed that Zanu PF had won two of the five seats in Harare province, a traditional opposition stronghold. More results are expected throughout the day.

Zanu PF went into Saturday's elections a certain winner, with 35 of the 66 seats already in hand, thanks to laws that guarantee seats to ruling party loyalists. An opposition stay-away call that has seriously weakened Mugabe's only real political challengers virtually assures a ruling party win - Staff Reporter/Reuters
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