Street protests threat as Mugabe wins again

PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe's party was declared the winner of Zimbabwe's general election last night as the opposition threatened to take its ballot-rigging protests into the streets.

Although Morgan Tsvangirai's opposition party, Movement for Democratic Change, won 31 of the first 54 seats to be declared, Mr Mugabe's ZANU-PF began cutting into the lead when results from rural constituencies began coming in.

By evening, ZANU-PF had won 55 of parliament's 120 elected seats, compared to 34 for the MDC. Mr Mugabe appoints an additional 30 seats, guaranteeing a majority for his party.

Mr Tsvangirai accused the government of trying to steal the election and urged people to defend their vote.

He said inconsistencies in the results were a sign of things to come and it now expects to lose seats overall in the 150-member parliament.

"The government has fraudulently, once again, betrayed the people," Mr Tsvangirai said in Harare. "We believe the people of Zimbabwe must defend their vote and their right to free and fair elections."

He said his party would do more this time than merely appeal the result in Zimbabwe's courts - which the government has packed with sympathetic judges. He hinted his supporters might take to the streets. Previous attempts at protest have been violently crushed by security forces and members of the ruling party's youth militia, and the party has shied away from confrontation in recent years. Independent Zimbabwean rights groups and the US, whose diplomats in the country observed the campaign and voting, agreed with Mr Tsvangirai that the polls were flawed.

They said that although this campaign had been relatively peaceful, violence and intimidation in previous years had already slanted the poll in favour of Mr Mugabe's party.

US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said voting had taken place on a "playing field heavily tilted in favour of the government."

Germany added its voice to other Western countries who condemned the election as a sham. Britain said the poll was fundamentally flawed and further weakened Mr Mugabe's legitimacy.

In another sign of irregularities, the independent Zimbabwe Election Support Network, which deployed 6,000 observers nationwide, said as many as a quarter of those who tried to vote were turned away because their names did not appear on the voter roll, or they failed to present proper identification.

But observers from neighbouring countries largely sympathetic to Mr Mugabe said the poll was conducted in an "open, transparent and professional manner." A delegation from the 14 member Southern African Development Community said the count was also valid.