Zimbabwe's opposition claimed an overwhelming victory against President Robert Mugabe in yesterday's presidential election, saying that the flow of results showed its candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, had 'massacred' the ruling Zanu-PF party.Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change defied a government ban on pre-empting the official announcement of the election results and said figures gathered by its agents monitoring the poll count showed a large vote against the man who has ruled Zimbabwe for 28 years.
| Smart thing to do too on the international stage. The MDC has learned from its last ill-considered boycott. |
The move came despite a warning by Zimbabwe's police chief, Augustine Chihuri, who said he will not permit the opposition to declare victory.
| Even if they win ... |
Hours earlier, thousands of Zimbabweans slept at polling stations and queued for hours before they opened after the opposition called for a large turnout to counter efforts by Mugabe to rig the election.
Voting was relatively smooth in most areas but poll monitors reported numerous irregularities and said they were concerned at the large numbers of people who were told they could not vote because of errors on the electoral roll.
African election monitors wrote to the Electoral Commission questioning the registration of more than 8,000 voters on vacant lots in Harare, or crammed into small shacks. The opposition alleges that, in fact, voters live miles away in rural areas but were bussed in by the government to counter the opposition vote in the capital. Before the vote, Tsvangirai said the MDC had uncovered evidence of widespread vote-rigging, including the names of a million 'ghost' voters on the roll.
A third candidate, Simba Makoni, a former finance minister who broke with Mugabe, has also accused the government of throwing the weight of state machinery behind the president's campaign, from propaganda on the country's only television station to threatening to cut off government-supplied food to rural opposition voters. 'Even if the MDC wins, the election cannot be said to be free and fair,' said Tsvangirai.
In southern Bulawayo, an opposition stronghold, Moffat Simon Mabhena, 78, was among those lining up to vote hours before the polls opened. 'The message is very clear: We want to see change in this country,' he said. 'I have been here since 2.30am and it's because I want to see Robert Mugabe out.'
The state-run Herald newspaper published a poll giving the President 57 per cent of the vote in an opinion poll, enough to avoid a run-off vote. The opposition says that number is no more than a guide to the scale of the fraud the government has planned.
The opposition has called on supporters to gather at polling stations for the count, to ensure that the correct results are posted and transmitted to the main collating centre in the capital. Noel Kututwa, chairman of the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) monitoring group, said: 'In past elections, it's at the tabulation stage that most of the problems have happened.'
| No, reeeeaaaalllly? Any good Chicago ward-heeler knows that ... |