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Zimbabwe opposition repeats 'no' to any presidential runoff
Donna Bryson, Associated Press
May 01, 2008

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jaGkiD_oeuNCWUEr7YyXikc7dKZQD90CFAB00

Johannesburg - Zimbabwe's opposition rejected a presidential runoff election despite a media report Wednesday saying the long-delayed official tally delivered them a victory short of an outright win. CNN quoted an unidentified senior official with Zimbabwe's ruling Zanu PF party as saying results from the March 29 election gave opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai 47 percent of the votes while President Robert Mugabe trailed with 43 percent. The CNN source said the results meant a second round of voting was necessary, since Zimbabwe's law requires a candidate to win 50 percent plus one vote to avoid a runoff. In Johannesburg, opposition spokesman George Sibotshiwe said he had heard reports that senior Zimbabwean government officials were saying official results put Tsvangirai ahead by a slim margin. Sibotshiwe reiterated that the opposition would not take part in a runoff because it believed only fraudulent results would deny Tsvangirai an outright victory. "If Robert Mugabe cannot accept the real results now, what's the guarantee he'll accept the real results after a runoff?" Sibotshiwe asked.

Liberia's president called on her fellow African leaders Wednesday to ensure the results reflect the will of Zimbabweans, warning of the danger of the country's conflict spilling over into its neighbors in southern Africa. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf recalled that her nation's back-to-back civil wars in 1989-2003 left 200,000 people dead in "a tragedy rooted in suppression of the will of the people and the choice of the people. So I'm one of those African leaders who say to our other leaders and our colleagues, it's time to do something about Zimbabwe," Sirleaf said in New York. Tsvangirai says he won the presidency outright, while independent observers have been saying that he only won the most votes and not the needed 50 percent plus one vote. In Zimbabwe's capital, electoral commission officials said that no results had been released and that party officials would not see them until a verification process set to start Thursday afternoon.

Sibotshiwe said the report a runoff would be necessary was part of a government strategy to gear expectations of the need for a second round of voting that Mugabe would engineer in his favor. The opposition says a campaign of terror and violence since the first round of voting has left it in disarray, with its main leaders staying out of the country in fear of arrest. Independent rights groups also say post- election violence makes it unlikely a runoff could be free and fair. Tiseke Kasambala, a Human Rights Watch researcher who was recently in Zimbabwe, said even without the violence, the government's handling of the first round, including the long delay in releasing presidential results, raises questions about whether any runoff can be valid. Kasambala, who returned Monday from two weeks in Zimbabwe, accused Mugabe's authoritarian regime of unleashing the army and ruling-party militants on dissenters, reserving the worst violence for those seen as betraying the man who has been president for nearly three decades.

The violence "is a form of punishment of people who turned against the ruling party," Kasambala told reporters in Johannesburg. "The government is actually focusing on its strongholds and some of the areas it thinks it should have won." She also said that in the past four days, Human Rights Watch received reports that more than 100 polling station officers - most of them teachers and low-ranking civil servants - had been detained in an eastern province. She called that another indication the government and its loyalists are targeting those seen as betraying Mugabe. Mugabe's administration contends opposition groups are responsible for the violence. Attempts to reach Zimbabwean officials for comment Wednesday were not successful. In Washington, the Senate passed a non-binding resolution late Tuesday calling on Mugabe to step aside and begin a peaceful transition to democratic rule.

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