President Robert Mugabe’s supporters today claimed a landslide victory in the Zimbabwe elections — amid allegations of “monumental fraud”.
But Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party later distanced itself from the “unauthorised” claims, which were countered by the rival Movement for Democratic Change. Releasing unofficial results early in Zimbabwe is illegal and police have said they would arrest anybody making premature claims about the outcome.
The election authorities were due to announce results within five days of yesterday’s poll. A senior source in Zanu-PF, who asked not to be named, said earlier that the outcome was already clear. “We’ve taken the election. We’ve buried the MDC. We never had any doubt that we’d win.”
However, a high-ranking source from Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC party said there had been “monumental fraud”. The Zimbabwe Election Support Network also claimed today that up to one million potential voters were turned away from 82 per cent of urban polling stations and that the election was “seriously compromised”.