Leader of the Movement for Democratic Change Morgan Tsvangirai addresses the media at his residence in Harare yesterday.
HARARE: Africa’s oldest president, Robert Mugabe, was declared winner of Zimbabwe’s election yesterday, but his rival, Morgan Tsvangirai, said he would challenge in court a result he called a fraud that would push the nation back into crisis.
Mugabe, 89, who has ruled the former British colony in southern Africa since its independence in 1980, was formally proclaimed re-elected for a five-year term barely an hour after Tsvangirai announced his planned legal challenge.
“We are going to go to court, we are going to go to the AU (African Union), we are going to go to the SADC (Southern African Development Community),” Tsvangirai angrily told a news conference in Harare.
While African observers have already broadly approved Wednesday’s peaceful vote, independent domestic monitors have described it as deeply flawed by registration problems that may have disenfranchised up to a million people.
The US and European Union, which have imposed sanctions on Mugabe over previous flawed elections and alleged abuses of power, say they are concerned over reports of irregularities in the July 31 polls.
Western election observers were kept out by Harare.
Zimbabwe’s Election Commission announced Mugabe had beaten Tsvangirai with just over 61 percent of the votes, against nearly 34 percent for Tsvangirai.
“Mugabe, Robert Gabriel, of ZANU-PF party, is therefore declared duly elected president of the Republic of Zimbabwe with effect of today,” commission head Rita Makarau told a news conference, drawing cheers from ZANU-PF supporters.
SADC observers have urged Tsvangirai to accept the result. They expressed relief that the elections had so far avoided the kind of violent turmoil that marred a vote in 2008. Then, 200 MDC supporters were killed by ZANU-PF supporters.
Tsvangirai, who had been serving as prime minister in a fractious unity government under Mugabe, said his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) would present evidence in court to back its charges that the July 31 vote was a “monumental fraud”.
“I thought this election was going to resolve this political crisis. It has not. It has failed. It has plunged the country back to where it was,” Tsvangirai said.
Responding to the criticism, Mugabe’s campaign manager Emmerson Mnangagwa, who is also defence minister, said the MDC had the “democratic right to do the wrong thing”. But he added: “The route they are taking will make sure that their political careers are buried and buried for good.” Reuters
