Zimbabwe vote 'could go to second round'

Zimbabwe could be facing a second round of voting in the race for the country’s presidency, election experts said today.

With still no official results declared since Saturday’s poll, one estimate showed opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai slightly ahead of Robert Mugabe.

But Mr Tsvangirai, who heads the Movement for Democratic Change party, did not appear to have gathered enough votes for an outright win over president Robert Mugabe.

Zimbabwe’s election laws say if one candidate does not get 51% of the vote, a re-run must be held.

The Zimbabwe Election Support Network, a coalition of 38 civil society organisations, said its random representative sample of polling stations showed Mr Tsvangirai won just over 49% of the vote. Mugabe was projected to come in second with about 42%, with 8% for his former minister Simba Makoni.

Any second ballot has to take place within three weeks of the first.

Meanwhile fears remained today that Mugabe’s supporters were rigging the count to keep him in power.

The MDC has already claimed victory based on its own results from polling stations across the country.

Mugabe has been accused of stealing past elections - although that was before the country’s economy collapsed and leading members of his own party openly defied him.

Marwick Khumalo, head of the Pan-African Parliament observer mission, said leading members of Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party were contemplating defeat with trepidation.

“I was talking to some of the big wigs in the ruling party and they also are concerned about the possibility of a change of guard,” Mr Khumalo said.

“ZANU-PF has actually been institutionalised in the lives of Zimbabweans, so it is not easy for anyone within the sphere of the ruling party to accept that ’maybe we might be defeated or might have been defeated.”’

The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission has released results for 132 seats in the parliamentary elections held at the same time as the presidential ballot.

The MDC has 68 seats, including six for a breakaway faction, to 64 for ZANU-PF.

Lovemore Sekeramayi, an electoral official, went on state television today to say the commission was receiving presidential votes and would need to collate and verify them.

“We urge all Zimbabweans to remain patient as we go through this meticulous process,” he said.