Police arrest 5 ZEC officials for ‘undercounting’ Mugabe votes
By Tichaona Sibanda
8 April 2008

Police have arrested at least five Zimbabwe Electoral Commission officials, for allegedly undercounting votes cast for Robert Mugabe.

The state controlled Herald reported that the alleged tampering of votes may have given Mugabe 5,000 votes less than he actually received.

But the MDC claim the allegations are a plot by Zanu-PF to discredit their own ‘rigging machinery’. The party’s acting treasurer-general Elton Mangoma believes the ‘story’ is a fictitious one because no names have been mentioned.

‘I honestly don’t believe that story. The candidates, polling agents and the polling officers, signed for every paper and obviously you will have that small margin of error in the onward transmission of the numbers. But I think the 5000 votes they mention are a gross exaggeration,’ Mangoma said.

Results from the March 29 presidential election are yet to be released, but the MDC claim their leader Morgan Tsvangirai won the contest against Mugabe, by a wider margin than they originally believed.