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| President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu PF wins a disputed landslide victory in the Zimbabwean national election |
The Roman
Catholic churches and the Evangelical Fellowship of Zimbabwe have asked their
followers to wait patiently for talks to resolve outstanding issues and to not
be consumed by bitterness that leads to violence.
However, the
Zimbabwean police, prepared for possible disturbances on Sunday by putting up
extra roadblocks in the capital, some of which were manned by police with
automatic rifles. In downtown extra troops and water cannon trucks were brought
in.
According to
official results, Morgan Tsvangirai, the opposition leader to Mugabe, took only
34 percent of the presidential votes as compared to Mugabe’s 62 percent and
Tsvangirai said that the vote was “a monumental fraud,” which he will
challenge.
Mugabe’s party
also claimed a two-thirds majority in the 210 seat parliament which will give
it the opportunity to change the country’s new constitution which it opposed
when the charter was being rewritten.
Elizabeth
Joseph, an Anglican worshipper said that it was inconceivable how Tsvangirai
could have lost by such a huge margin. She added that church service that
morning had been more like a funeral.
Due to
allegations that Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party inflated voting and the absence of
about 700,000 names of eligible voters from voter’s lists, observers from the
African Union and regional southern African monitors have demanded that an
investigation takes place.
According to
independent observers, even if the official state election commission, which is
dominated by supporters of Mugabe, decides to make available voting ballots, so
that a complete audit of the lists can take place, it could take weeks to
complete.
However, after
the nine days that are allowed for legal challenges to the votes, the 89 year
old Mugabe could be sworn in for his seventh term of office since independence
in 1980. Mugabe and his party deny all knowledge of vote rigging.
Mugabe was
congratulated by South African President Jacob Zuma who has been the chief
regional mediator in Zimbabwe’s decade long political and economic crisis. In a
statement from Zuma’s office, he also asked for the losers to accept defeat
with honor and respect.
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