Rival Resists Runoff Election in Zimbabwe

The opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai said Saturday that he was the winner of Zimbabwe’s presidential election in March. (Alexander Joe/Agence France-Presse)
JOHANNESBURG: April 6th. (NY Times) — The Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai on Saturday insisted that he had won the presidential election outright and that no runoff vote would be needed. He also warned that the governing party was readying a campaign of violence against his supporters to hang on to power. Mr. Tsvangirai (pronounced CHANG-guh-rye) promised safety to President Roberet Mugabe, 84, if he stepped aside. But early Sunday, the government-run Sunday Mail newspaper reported that Mr. Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party, referring to “errors” in the tally, had asked for a recount in the election. The party also called on the election commission to “defer the announcement of the presidential election result,” the newspaper said on its Web site.

Mr. Tsvangirai’s call for Mr. Mugabe to enter talks aimed at a peaceful, democratic transition had already seemed unlikely to find a warm reception from ZANU-PF. On Friday it said Mr. Mugabe would take part in a runoff if neither he nor Mr. Tsvangirai, 56, won a majority. The opposition and Mr. Mugabe’s party are jockeying for political position as the country and the world wait with consternation for Zimbabwean election officials to announce the outcome of a presidential election held last Saturday, a race that by the opposition’s count gave Mr. Tsvangirai a bare majority, though an independent projection of results found him well ahead but short of a majority. Lawyers for Mr. Tsvangirai’s party, Movement for Democratic Change, tried Saturday to force the Electoral Commission to release the official tally through a petition to the High Court. A hearing is expected on Sunday. When the lawyers approached the court in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, on Saturday morning, to file the lawsuit, armed police officers briefly blocked them from entering, Reuters reported. “We can’t go in,” an opposition lawyer, Alec Muchadehama, told journalists. “They are threatening to shoot. They say no one enters the court.”

A growing chorus that includes Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain and Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary general, has appealed for a speedy release of the vote count. But on Saturday, President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, perhaps the most important international player in Zimbabwe’s electoral drama, counseled patience after meeting Mr. Brown in London, news agencies reported. “I think there is time to wait,” said Mr. Mbeki, who was appointed by a regional bloc of nations to mediate in Zimbabwe but has been accused by Mr. Tsvangirai of favoring Mr. Mugabe. “Let’s see the outcome of the election results.” The governing party, which has led the country into a ruinous economic decline, lost its majority in the lower house of Parliament in last week’s election for the first time since the country’s independence from white rule in 1980, but is now demanding a recount for 16 seats, apparently in a bid to reclaim control.

Mr. Tsvangirai, who was beaten by the police in a crackdown on the opposition last year, warned at a news conference in Harare that Mr. Mugabe’s party would resort to violent intimidation of his supporters during a runoff. He expressed reservations about participating in a runoff, though he stopped short of threatening a boycott. He said the party was mobilizing youth militias and veterans of the independence struggle to carry out a campaign he described as a war against the people. The party, which confiscated large, commercial farms of white farmers, helping lead to the economy’s collapse, is stoking fears that an opposition government would take land given to blacks and return it to whites. Much of the land was given to Mr. Mugabe’s cronies, Zimbabwe analysts say. A state-run newspaper, The Herald, said Saturday that white farmers were returning “in droves,” threatening to reclaim their land, a charge Roy Bennett, the opposition party’s treasurer, called “absolute nonsense.” There are signs that Mr. Mugabe’s party is tightening its grip on the country. The police blocked the main roads leading into Harare’s center on Saturday, and were searching vehicles.

The government has also cracked down on foreign journalists, who have been covering the election without accreditation. On Thursday, the police arrested Barry Bearak, a correspondent in the Johannesburg bureau of The New York Times, on charges related to covering the election without official permission from the government. He was still being held in a Harare jail on Saturday. Mr. Tsvangirai’s party ran large advertisements in major South African newspapers on Saturday calling on Zimbabwe’s neighbors and other countries to support its efforts to unseat Mr. Mugabe. “At this stage, we offer the hand of peace to the current regime, and will recognize and respect their rights, if the transition is expedited without further ado, but this offer will not remain open indefinitely,” the advertisement said.
By Celia Dugger
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