No Candidate Topped 50%, Officials Say
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, May 3, 2008
HARARE, Zimbabwe, May 2 -- Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai won more votes than President Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe's presidential election but not enough to avoid a runoff, according to official results released Friday after a delay of more than a month.
The electoral commission said Tsvangirai won 47.9 percent, compared with 43.2 percent for Mugabe. An independent candidate, Simba Makoni, won 8.3 percent.
The constitution requires a runoff between the top two candidates if no candidate gets more than 50 percent of the votes. Election officials said they will soon announce a date for the second round, which is required by law to take place within 21 days.
Despite Tsvangirai's strong showing and his party's takeover of parliament, the opposition had no clear path to power in this beleaguered nation, where a ruling clique in power since 1980 has shown little interest in stepping aside.
Opposition officials, who insist they won the presidential election outright, said they will decide over the weekend whether to participate in a second round of voting that they view as unnecessary. They complained that the results were released improperly and that their concerns about the tallies in several electoral districts were brushed aside.
The opposition's own tallies put Tsvangirai's total at 50.3 percent, just enough for a first-round victory.
"It's a scandal. It's criminal," opposition spokesman Nelson Chamisa said. "As far as we're concerned, we have won."
The delay in releasing the results from the March 29 vote has drawn international criticism, including from other countries in southern Africa, where Mugabe's increasingly destructive rule has rarely been publicly rebuked. The United States and Britain reiterated their concerns Friday.
"This isn't a case of better late than never," said State Department spokesman Tom Casey. "That final tally, I think, has rather serious credibility problems, given the inexplicably long delays and some of the post-election irregularities that have occurred."
The extra time appears to have suited Mugabe's strategy for hanging on to power. After several initial days of confusion, when some of his closest supporters urged him to step down, the ruling party reasserted control over rural areas with a surge of violence and intimidation. Hundreds of opposition activists were arrested or injured, and thousands were displaced.
Many of the top leaders of the Movement for Democratic Change, including Tsvangirai, have been outside the country on diplomatic missions since shortly after the vote. Tsvangirai has said repeatedly that he faces arrest or assault when he returns.
As Tsvangirai's party wrangled over whether to boycott the runoff, Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front said it would welcome either another election or an opposition boycott.
"I don't think that they are serious about not participating, because they have been saying different things since the election day," said Mugabe's security minister, Didymus Mutasa. "But if they are serious this time around, they will be shocked because we will proceed without them. Mugabe will be declared the winner unopposed."
The widespread political brutality, including last week's arrest of hundreds of activists who had moved into opposition party headquarters after fleeing their homes in the countryside, has added fuel to opposition arguments that participating in a second round of voting will only invite more violence, with no possibility that Mugabe, 84, will step down.
Party officials said Friday that they would proceed to form a government but offered no plan for how they would implement it.
Political analyst Eldred Masunungure said Tsvangirai has no choice but to begin campaigning for the runoff.
"He is given to prevaricating and flip-flopping, but I believe that he will eventually participate, no matter what he says," Masunungure said. If the election occurs, he added, "people will be beaten and killed. There will be chaos."
Violence perpetrated by ruling party forces, including the military, police and gangs of youths, has been focused in large rural towns that were once Mugabe strongholds. Tsvangirai won in many of these areas, by wide margins in many cases. Opposition activists have been beaten and tortured, and more than 800 homes have been burned down, according to Chamisa.
Yet many voters said the attempts to intimidate them have not changed the political dynamics in a country where inflation is 165,000 percent and formal employment rare.
"We already knew that Mugabe will cheat again," said Tabhani Mabhena, 45, a salesperson in Harare, the capital. "What is, however, a fact is that he won't continue to cheat forever. The reason why he did not win this election was because he did not rig enough. He is running out of means and tricks to rig the elections because the margins are huge. In the runoff, the margins will be bigger. He will be shocked."
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