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Zimbabwe runoff announced for end of June
CNN
May 16, 2008

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/africa/05/16/zimbabwe.runoff/

The runoff for Zimbabwe's presidential election will be held June 27, Zimbabwe's Electoral Commission said Friday.

The runoff is the second round of voting after the March 29 election, which saw opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai receiving more votes than President Robert Mugabe.

The electoral commission's official tally of first-round results showed that Tsvangirai failed to win enough votes to avoid a runoff.

Tsvangirai's party, the Movement for Democratic Change, disputed that. It said Tsvangirai won 50.3 percent of the vote -- enough to avoid a second round. The party argued that the election commission, which delayed publicly releasing the results for weeks, had fudged the numbers to protect Mugabe.

"My party, the Movement for Democratic Change, is a government-in-waiting that is not prepared to wait anymore," Tsvangirai told a political conference in Belfast, Northern Ireland on Friday.

"We will pioneer a new form of democratic governance, taking our agenda directly to the people," he said. "After all, the MDC began as a people's party. Never again will we take something so precious as freedom for granted."

Since the balloting, the MDC and church groups have reported kidnappings, torture and other violence, including the deaths of 25 opposition party members. They say the violence targets opponents of Mugabe, who has ruled the south African country since it became independent 28 years ago.

"We will triumph over the dictatorship of Robert Mugabe," Tsvangirai promised, calling on African countries to assist Zimbabwe in achieving a smooth transition of power.

Mugabe's government, Tsvangirai said, is motivated by greed and is unable to address issues plaguing Zimbabwe, including the economy, health care, and education.
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Tsvangirai promised his government would promote a policy of "inclusion and tolerance," and he said no Zimbabwean would have anything to fear from the new government.

"In Zimbabwe, we never stop hoping for a better tomorrow," he said. "Hope is our ammunition in the fight against terror. It is the fuel that drives us and the glue that binds us. I know that this hope is not misplaced."

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