Tsvangirai declared winner, but run-off looms

Zimbabwe's long-running presidential elections took a new twist yesterday, as senior government officials claimed that opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai had defeated President Robert Mugabe, but not by a large enough majority to claim overall victory.

The announcement, which stated that Mr Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party had won 47 per cent of the vote to President Mugabe's 43 per cent, comes more than a month after the original vote on 29 March, at the end of a long and drawn out recount. An election run-off between the two contenders before the end of May is now the most likely outcome, although the official results have still not been released.

The MDC last night rejected the government's figures, claiming that Tsvangirai had already won the election outright and accusing Mr Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF party, who have been in power since 1980, of delaying the results in order to rig the outcome of the vote. "As a people we voted and expressed ourselves democratically through the ballot and somebody is now trying to subvert our will," said Mr Tsvangirai's spokesman George Sibotshiwe. "Mugabe needs to concede defeat and step down."

The party also said that in the four weeks since the election, 20 of its members had been killed by pro-government militias seeking to ensure that MDC supporters would be too frightened to vote against Mugabe in the case of a run-off.

The government has denied waging a campaign of violence against its opponents, saying that the MDC carried out the attacks themselves. But the organisation Human Rights Watch said that the Zimbabwean army was providing Zanu-PF militias with weapons and transport, encouraging a campaign of intimidation.

"The army and its allies are intensifying their brutal grip on wide swaths of rural Zimbabwe to ensure that a possible second round of presidential elections goes their way," said the group's Africa director Georgette Gagnon.

Mr Tsvangirai's willingness to take part in another vote remains unclear. Initially he agreed to contest a run-off on the condition that the voting and counting would be internationally monitored and supervised by the United Nations. But the government's policy of intimidating voters and attacking members of his party have led him to say that he would not participate in another vote under any circumstances.

If he does refuse outright, Zimbabwean law states that he would have to forfeit the election and hand victory to Mr Mugabe.