Mugabe Is Trailing, Observer Team Says

With No Official Results Yet, Group Predicts Runoff

HARARE, Zimbabwe, March 31 -- Evidence mounted Monday that Zimbabwe's opposition candidate defeated President Robert Mugabe this past weekend in the first round of a national vote, creating the biggest threat to his grip on power in 28 years of unbroken rule.

Although official results remained mysteriously unannounced, the Zimbabwe Election Support Network, an independent observation group, said that a statistical model drawing on a sample of posted vote tallies showed that Mugabe got 41.8 percent of the vote, compared with 49.4 percent for opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai. An independent, Simba Makoni, got 8 percent, the group found.

If confirmed, the monitor group's numbers would push Mugabe and Tsvangirai into a runoff vote -- something analysts have long said would consolidate opposition to the president and hasten the end of his rule. Zimbabwe election laws require that a winning candidate get more than 50 percent of the vote. The new election likely would be April 19.

The observers' announcement carried no legal authority, but the highly anticipated report, coming as diplomats and other outside observers reached similar conclusions, bolstered opposition members' repeated claims that they had won Saturday's vote.

The report was issued as the government's electoral commission continued to withhold information about the presidential vote, fueling allegations that its officials are manipulating the numbers to protect Mugabe.

"We felt it was important to release results so that the public would know what's going on," said Noel Kututwa, chairman of the observer group, a coalition of 38 nongovernmental organizations.

In races for parliamentary seats, however, the commission has slowly issued partial results, showing a slight lead for the opposition. The election observers made no projections in those races.

Mugabe, 84, who took power when Zimbabwe was formed in 1980 out of the former British colony Rhodesia, has grown increasingly authoritarian as the nation's economy has deteriorated and challenges to his rule have proliferated. As inflation soared toward a worst-in-world 100,000 percent over the past year, his support plummeted.

Results posted outside polling stations across the country showed that even his once-massive advantage in rural areas has eroded. Urban discontent, meanwhile, has heightened to the point that opponents are speaking openly of taking to the streets should Mugabe manipulate results, despite his repeated threats to crush dissent with his feared police and military.

"This time we are not afraid to die, because we are already suffering," said Gerald Shoko, 23, an opposition party activist in Harare, the capital. "Why should I be afraid of dying now if it will mean a better life for my family? This time it's do or die!"

Officials from the observer group, which had more than 8,000 monitors, said that the margins of error in their statistical model left open the possibility that Tsvangirai might win a majority. His total could be as high as 51.8 percent or as low as 47 percent under the statistical model, which was based on publicly posted results at 435 polling places, about 5 percent of the national total.

Similar models have been used in 20 other countries, including neighboring Zambia, to accurately project results, the group said.