Western and African nations appear at odds over the outcome of Zimbabwe's presidential election, which saw Zanu-PF leader Robert Mugabe re-elected as the country's president for a seventh term on Saturday.
Zimbabwe's electoral commission announced that Mr Mugabe (89) had won 61 per cent of the vote in the disputed July 31st poll, compared to the 34 per cent secured by his main rival, Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai.
Mr Mugabe’s party also won 158 of the 210 seats in parliament, which gave it a two-thirds majority in the lower house. The result effectively wiped out the parliamentary gains made by the MDC in the 2008 general election, and ensures Zanu-PF has the numerical strength to make amendments to the new constitution.
The MDC met on Saturday to discuss its response to the election outcome and, following the meeting, Mr Tsvangirai said his party, which won only 50 parliamentary seats, had in its possession evidence of widespread rigging by Zanu-PF.
Court option
"There is no celebration, there is national mourning," Mr Tsvangirai said at a Harare press conference before adding his party would not "participate in any government institutions" in protest. "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]."
According to local election observers and the MDC, Mr Mugabe’s party manipulated the voters’ roll to such an extent that nearly one million people who wanted to cast their ballot were disenfranchised. Zanu-PF has rubbished the allegations.
But the resignation since the vote of one member of Zimbabwe’s nine-member electoral commission team has added weight to their claims. Mkhululi Nyathi cited doubts about the integrity of the results as the reason behind his decision.
However, how receptive the AU and SADC will be to an approach by the MDC remains to be seen, as both bodies’ monitoring teams have been reluctant to condemn the election.
While they conceded there appeared to be irregularities that needed further investigation, they maintained the poll was free and fair when it came to political campaigning.
On Saturday, South African president Jacob Zuma, the SADC mediator in Zimbabwe's political crisis since 2009, congratulated Mr Mugabe for his re-election. "President Zuma urges all political parties in Zimbabwe to accept the outcome of the elections as election observers reported it to be an expression of the will of the people," he said in statement.
The African reaction to the poll results was in stark contrast to the view of western nations, who were banned from observing the poll because of the sanctions they placed on Mr Mugabe and his main allies.
British foreign secretary William Hague expressed “deep concern” over the election, saying the failure to share the voters’ roll with political parties was a critical flaw. He said other irregularities that surfaced called “into serious question the credibility of the election”.
“We note that some political parties have rejected the result on the basis of these irregularities,” he said.
Not a 'credible expression'
US secretary of state John Kerry also expressed doubts about fairness. "The United States does not believe that the results announced today represent a credible expression of the will of the Zimbabwean people," he said. The Australian government has also called for the poll to be run again.
