Mugabe party declared Zimbabwe election winner

President Robert Mugabe’s party was tonight announced the winner of enough seats to secure a parliamentary majority.

Earlier his party was remorselessly heading toward victory in Zimbabwe’s general election today 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, Mugabe’s ZANU-PF began cutting into the lead when results from rural constituencies began.

By tonight, ZANU-PF had won 45 seats.

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,” Tsvangirai said in Harare.

“We believe the people of Zimbabwe must defend their vote and their right to free and fair elections.”

Tsvangirai 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 United States, whose diplomats in the country observed the campaign and voting, agreed with 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 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”.

Meanwhile Amnesty International reported that more than 250 women were arrested after police broke up a peaceful post-election prayer gathering in Harare on Thursday night.

Police beat several of the women during and after arrest and a number were reportedly badly injured, said the human rights group.