Zimbabwe's Opposition To Boycott Runoff Vote

Party's Executive Panel Unanimous in Its Belief 2nd Round Isn't Needed

HARARE, Zimbabwe, April 10 -- Zimbabwe's opposition party announced Thursday that it plans to boycott any runoff election with President Robert Mugabe. The move abruptly halted the political momentum toward a second and decisive round of balloting that many voters hoped would finally topple their president after 28 years in power.

The 50 members of the opposition's National Executive Committee voted unanimously that they believed their presidential candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, won the March 29 vote by the clear majority needed for a first-round victory, said party spokesman Nelson Chamisa. A second round of voting, he said, would only encourage Mugabe to redouble efforts to rig the results and intimidate opposition supporters.

"We have resolved that we will not participate," Chamisa said. "There won't be any runoff. We have won."

Chamisa declined to say how Tsvangirai intended to assume the presidency in a country with no history of peaceful transfers of power.

The ruling party says Tsvangirai did not receive more than 50 percent of the votes, the threshold for avoiding a runoff. An independent monitoring group said the extent of the Tsvangirai victory was not clear enough to rule out the need for a runoff.

The police, military, intelligence service, government propaganda organs and ruling party militias have stepped up coordination since the ruling party announced last Friday that it intended to vigorously contest and win a runoff vote. Opposition activists in several areas have been assaulted since then. Meanwhile, police have arrested seven electoral officials as part of what Mugabe's allies call a "purge" of alleged supporters of the opposition party.

Mugabe's security minister, Didymus Mutasa, dismissed the opposition's announcement of a boycott, saying it was premature because official results have not yet been announced.

"That's what people who know they are going to lose in an election do," Mutasa said.

Rank-and-file opposition activists have expressed mixed feelings in recent days about the prospect of a runoff against Mugabe. Many are eager for a chance to defeat him decisively, but others see little hope that he will ever leave by the power of the ballot box. Analysts are split as well on the most sensible way forward.

Trevor Ncube, publisher of Zimbabwe's two independent newspapers, called the opposition's decision "political posturing" and predicted that party officials would change their minds before the second round. Tsvangirai's party, the Movement for Democratic Change, often has threatened to boycott elections but rarely followed through.

"If they boycott, they go into political oblivion," Ncube said. "They are playing into Robert Mugabe's hands."

The electoral commission has repeatedly refused to release the results of the presidential election, and the timing of a runoff vote remains undetermined. Mugabe's party suffered a historic loss of control of parliament in results the commission has released.

Opposition officials have been suing for the results for several days, and a court has said it planned to rule on the matter Monday. An emergency meeting of southern African heads of state is planned for Saturday in neighboring Zambia. Mugabe and Tsvangirai are expected to attend.

Chamisa, the opposition spokesman, vowed action if the release of results was delayed into next week, though he declined to say what the party was planning.

"We are organizing the people to respond," he said. "If the results do not come out by Monday, people will have to make some sort of statement."