Maravi

MDC claims early lead

MDC claims early lead
By Kingsley Kaswende and George Chellah in Harare, Zimbabwe
Tuesday April 01, 2008 [04:00]

THE opposition MDC yesterday claimed its leader Morgan Tsvangirai was leading by 60 per cent in 128 constituencies where it received unofficial results. There have been delays in announcing the election results and by 12:00 hours yesterday, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) had only released official results for six constituencies, which were shared equally between ZANU-PF and MDC.

These are Chegutu West, Mutoko North, Mutare Central, Goromonzi West, Mutasa South and Chipinge Central.

MDC secretary general Tendai Biti, who has constantly been releasing unofficial results the party is collecting from its agents around the country, said from the information they had gathered in 128 constituencies, Tsvangirai was leading by 60 per cent while President Robert Mugabe was trailing with 30 per cent, with independent candidate Simba Makoni registering 10 per cent. Nothing was said about the fourth candidate, Langtone Towungana.

Biti also claimed MDC had won 96 of the 128 parliamentary seats, most of them in rural areas. He said there was no discrepancy between MDC's unofficial results and ZEC's official ones in the six constituencies that had been announced so far.

"In our view, we can't see the national averages changing and we believe that the people of Zimbabwe have spoken. We will wait for the official results," Biti said at a press briefing yesterday.

Other unofficial results, however, indicate that ZANU-PF could have won the entire election by 52 per cent with 111 out of the 210 seats in Parliament.

But Biti said MDC had won 11 of 12 seats in Bulawayo, with one of the seats uncontested following the death of a contestant.

In Harare, Biti said, MDC had won 28 of 29 seats with 20 of 26 in Manicaland Province and two of 22 in Mashonaland Central.

He claimed his party had won seven seats that had been counted so far in Mashonaland West, four of 24 in Mashonaland East, 15 of 26 in Masvingo Province, five of 12 in Matebeleland North Province, three of 12 in Matebeleland South and five of 26 in Midlands Province.

Biti said MDC was not misleading the public by announcing unofficial results but the party had an obligation to inform the public.

He said Section 64 (1)(e) allowed for results to be posted outside polling stations the moment they were ready.

"We have 4,000 cameras countrywide that are capturing these results. We are only taking what's already in the public domain. No law prohibits us from doing that and we have to inform ZEC that we are not usurping their power," said Biti.

Labels: ELECTIONS, ZIMBABWE

posted by MrK @ 6:19 AM