Robert Mugabe was sworn in Sunday for a sixth term of office as Zimbabwe president after being declared winner of a one-man election widely denounced throughout the world as an illegitimate farce. “I will well and truly serve this country in the office of president, so help me God,” 84-year-old Mugabe said at a ceremony at his State House residence, presided over by Chief Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku. The rapidly-convened ceremony was staged barely an hour after the electoral commission declared he won a total of 2,150,269 votes against 233,000 for opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who boycotted the election but whose name still appeared on ballot papers.Turnout was announced at 42.37 percent, and 131,481 ballot papers were rejected. Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) derided the announcement as a ‘joke’. “This is an unbelievable joke and act of desperation on the part of the regime,” the MDC’s chief spokesman Nelson Chamisa told AFP.
Joke of the year: “It qualifies for the Guinness Book of Records as joke of the year,” he added. No African heads of state were present for the inauguration ceremony, in stark contrast to his previous election victories.
Mugabe is AfricaÂ’s oldest head of state and has ruled the former British colony uninterrupted since independence from Britain in 1980. He was expected to fly out of Harare soon after the ceremony, headed for an African Union summit in Egypt where his countryÂ’s crisis was to feature high on the agenda.