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Over a month after the presidential election, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) finally released official results: Incumbent thug president Robert Mugabe received 43.2 percent of the vote, while Morgan Tsvangirai won 47.9 percent. Both men have now announced they will contest a run-off election.
Mr Tsvangirai and his supporters in the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) have long maintained that he won the election outright with over 50 percent of the vote, but the ZEC appears to have short-circuited that claim by selectively leaking the results.
[T]he presidential election candidates or their agents yesterday met Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) officials to tackle the crisis triggered by the withholding of results — more than a month later — due to a demand by President Robert Mugabe for a recount of the votes.
Yesterday’s emergency meeting took place against a backdrop of a fresh problem sparked off by ZEC’s leakage of official results to defeated Zanu PF leaders who in turn passed them on to the international media in a bid to sustain their pursuit for a run-off.
ZEC and Zanu PF were anxious to ward off mounting pressure for results to come out and build a case for a run-off, especially against a background of MDC’s claims that Tsvangirai had won the election outright.
MDC claims that the ruling Zanu-PF party and state security forces have already unleashed a campaign of violence and intimidation in hopes of bolstering Mugabe’s chances in the run-off.
The run-off election must be held within 21 days of the official announcement of first-round results.
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