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Opposition leader rejects need for runoff election
The Washington Post
April 05, 2008

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/05/AR2008040500966.html?nav=rss_world/africa

Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai Saturday told reporters that he believes he won the presidential election last weekend and rejected claims from President Robert Mugabe's party that a runoff election would be necessary.

"We won this election without the need for a runoff," he said, adding that his party was concerned that a second round of voting would turn to violence. He accused Mugabe of seeking to intimidate opponents and planning a "war against the people" to maintain control of the country.

"Violence will be the new weapon to reverse the people's will," he said.

The results from last weekend's historic presidential election have not been released by the government, but Mugabe's party acknowledged Friday that it lost. Party leaders, however, vowed to fight back in a second round of voting that many Zimbabweans fear will be much less peaceful than the first.

Tensions have been rising sharply in Harare, the capital, as signs mounted that Mugabe was preparing to use extraordinary measures to regain control amid the biggest challenge to his rule since Zimbabwe gained independence in
1980.

Lawyers for the opposition party were barred by armed guards Saturday from entering the High Court building where they hoped to press a suit forcing the government to release the vote tallies, news services reported.

"The case has been postponed until 12 noon tomorrow," Movement for Democratic Change lawyer Andrew Makoni told the Reuters news service. He said the electoral commission had asked for more time to file opposing papers.

Riot police and trucks mounted with water cannons appeared on city streets Friday. The country's feared association of liberation war veterans, which has long served as Mugabe's enforcer, also threatened to deploy Friday.

A top ruling party official, Didymus Mutasa, said party officials were planning to "purge" the electoral commission of alleged opposition supporters and also would challenge the results of 16 seats in the lower house of parliament, enough to let them retake control of the chamber they lost in results announced this week.

Diplomats and opposition officials said Mugabe, 84, was considering whether to invoke emergency powers to delay the presidential runoff election for 90 days in a bid to improve his chances of winning.

Mutasa did not say when the runoff would occur but said a second round was necessary. "This time we will be more vigilant, and I'm sure we will win by a wide margin," he said.

Mutasa said Mugabe got 43 percent of the vote in Saturday's election, compared with 47 percent for Tsvangirai. The numbers are close to those reported by independent observers. The opposition party says Tsvangirai narrowly topped 50 percent, which would allow him to avoid the second round of voting automatically required when no candidate wins a clear majority. Official results in the presidential race remain unannounced.

After days of reports that Mugabe's closest associates were split over whether he should participate in a runoff or step down, the 49-member ruling body of his Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front met for five boisterous hours Friday. It voted unanimously to fight on in a second round, Mutasa said.

"The old man is raring to go," he said.

The announcements came after days of rumors and reports that Mugabe, who has led Zimbabwe into a devastating economic morass, was considering stepping down at the urging of some family members and friends. Instead, Zimbabweans braced for a return to the violent politics common in earlier elections but largely absent in the run-up to Saturday's vote.

"Mugabe, after a defeat he did not expect, surely cannot want to face another election without a bag of dirty tricks," said Nomore Mutizwa, 32, who runs a cellphone shop in Harare. "I'm sure people will be beaten up and intimidated, especially in the rural areas."

Others prepared to meet any violence with resistance.

"We need to fight for our country," said Calisto Sibanda, 23, a black-market fuel trader.

Adding to the tensions was the reemergence of the association of veterans from Zimbabwe's liberation war in the 1970s. The veterans have long been enforcers of Mugabe's policies and in 2000 led chaotic and often violent invasions of white-owned commercial farms that gave land to many black peasants but devastated the vital agricultural sector.

Hundreds of veterans marched silently through Harare's streets Friday, according to news reports. Afterward, leaders announced that they had accused Tsvangirai of seeking to help the white farmers reclaim their land and said they were prepared to fight back.

"What I know is we will be compelled to repel the invasions," said Jabulani Sibanda, head of the war veterans' association. He said the opposition party, in claiming to have won last weekend's election, "is provoking us. . . . They're provoking our spirit."

Fears also spread that Mugabe might activate the ruling party's notorious youth militias, known as the Green Bombers for the color of their uniforms. Although quiet recently, they have been key actors in Zimbabwe's history of political violence.

Police crackdowns on foreign journalists covering the elections and at least one democracy activist group also fueled anxiety in the capital. Two correspondents, including Barry Bearak of the New York Times, were charged Friday with violating Zimbabwe's strict journalism laws.

Bearak was in a group of four foreigners arrested at a Harare hotel Thursday. Zimbabwe has barred most foreign journalists from legally reporting on the election.

The New York Times issued a statement saying Bearak "is being held in a frigid cell without shoes, warm clothing or blankets."

His lawyer "informs us that the top legal officials in the office of the attorney general agreed that the case . . . should be thrown out because the police could produce no witnesses or other evidence against him. But somehow the state's lawyers were overruled," the statement said.

Analysts say Mugabe would struggle to beat Tsvangirai in a runoff. An independent candidate, Simba Makoni, formerly a ruling party official, is expected to endorse Tsvangirai.

Tendai Biti, secretary general of the opposition party, said Friday that government lawyers had begun drafting legislation to delay the vote. He said then that Tsvangirai might boycott the election if it was not held on schedule.

Biti disputed allegations leveled by ruling party official Mutasa that the electoral commission had opposition agents who manipulated the results.

"That's a joke," Biti said. "Those are the desperate maneuvers of a dinosaur regime that has struggled to face the reality of extinction."

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