Run-off to be held end of May
Plans are already underway to hold a run-off poll between President Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai at the end of May.
Tsvangirai has insisted that no run-off is required because he won the March 29 ballot outright but ruling ZANU PF party and independent observers – who acknowledge Mugabe lost to Tsvangirai – say the opposition leader won with less than 50 percent of the vote, warranting a second ballot to settle the contest.
A senior ZEC official, who agreed to speak on condition he was not named, said it was going to take probably up to a week before verification is completed and a final result announced but said the commission was looking to staging a run-off election in the last week of May.
“It is going to be more than a week to have the final result,” said the official. “But what we are preparing for is a run-off election that should be held in the last week of May.”
ZEC deputy chief elections officer Utoile Silagwana refused to comment on the possibility of a run-off election at the end of May insisting that “everything is going to depend on the pace of the verification process.”
Zimbabwe’s Electoral Act prescribes that in the event that none of the contests in a presidential election is able to garner more than 50 percent of the vote at the first instance, a run-off poll should take place 21 days after announcement of official results of the first round ballot.
Although there are no official results of the presidential ballot, political parties and the independent Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) had been able to project the likely outcome of the vote using figures that were posted outside individual polling stations.
ZESN and ZANU PF agreed in principle that none of the contestants took more than 50 percent of the vote while Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party differed saying from its calculations its leader won with 50.3 percent of the vote, enough to avoid a run-off poll.
Speculation by local and international media suggested that a second round election was needed because Tsvangirai defeated Mugabe but fell a shade lower than 50 percent of the vote.
Deputy Information Minister Bright Matonga told the media on Thursday that from the government’s calculations no one took more than 50 percent of the vote and that a run-off poll was needed in accordance with the law.
"As far as I'm concerned, there is going to be a runoff. We have got our own results," he said without disclosing what those results were.
Tsvangirai’s MDC won 99 seats in a parallel parliamentary poll while a faction of the party led by Arthur Mutambara-led took 10 seats to bring the total number of seats controlled by the opposition party to 109 out of the 210-member House of Assembly.
An independent candidate won one seat while ZANU PF, which had controlled Parliament since Zimbabwe’s 1980 independence took 97 seats. Three constituencies where voting could not take place will hold by-elections at a yet unknown date.
The ZEC’s failure to release presidential election results has touched off a tense stalemate that analysts fear could lead to violence and bloodshed, while the United States has threatened sanctions over delays to issue results.
The MDC has accused Mugabe of delaying results to use the time to unleash violence and terror on voters in bid to cow them to support him in the second round run-off ballot.
The MDC says at least 20 of its supporters have been murdered while another 5 000 have been displaced in the violence, which it the opposition party has described as a war being waged by state security forces and ZANU PF militants against Zimbabweans. - agencies
Recent highlights:-
Police raid MDC and observers offices
215 MDC activists detained in Zimbabwe
Mugabe Chinese arms ship allowed in Angola
Mugabe’s future “may hold key”
Date set for presidential re-run
