Verification of presidential vote begins

By Tichaona Sibanda
1 May 2008

The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission on Thursday begun verifying the results of the presidential poll held on the 29th March. ZEC officials were expected to present presidential candidates with initial results.
Representatives of the four candidates who stood in the election met initially at a Harare hotel to discuss the ground rules for the verification exercise. The government’s chief elections officer, Lovemore Sekeramayi, in the presence of regional observers and diplomats, chaired the discussion.

The commission was to unveil its preliminary results and then invite candidates to present their own tallies, in a bid to reach agreement on the figures. ZEC chairman George Chiweshe told journalists it was an agreement with the candidates that ‘they will do their own tallies and we do ours, then when we get together we compare the results.’
International observers and the MDC have described as a ‘farce’ the exercise particularly after elements within ZEC allegedly leaked ‘results’ to Zanu-PF officials on Wednesday.

MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa said he deplored the fact that ZEC leaked ‘doctored’ results in an attempt to subvert the will of the people.

‘This attempt by the regime to steal the election through ZEC will not work because all figures collated from the provinces for the presidential vote were in the public domain 24 hours after the poll. It’s a matter of checking figures from each constituency at provincial level before tallying the figures nationally,’ Chamisa said.

Unsurprisingly the government leaked results show Morgan Tsvangirai had beaten Robert Mugabe in the election, but not by enough of a margin to avoid a run-off ballot. Statistical evidence released by the MDC shows that Tsvangirai was the outright winner in the presidential election.
The MDC data, kept safe in South Africa, indicate that a run-off election will not be necessary as Tsvangirai is in pole position with 51.7 percent while Mugabe lags behind with 43.3 percent.
In total Tsvangirai amassed 1 248 395 votes compared to Mugabe’s 1 044 292. The total number of votes, including those of other candidates, is said to be 2 413 830.
So far, polling agents have already agreed and signed for two sets of the results for Harare and Bulawayo. In Bulawayo, Tsvangirai had a total of 49 660 votes while Mugabe received 11 146. In Harare the MDC leader had 227 387 votes and Mugabe received 60 523.
It was not immediately clear whether the election commission would make its preliminary results public in the absence of an immediate agreement between the rival parties at Thursday’s meeting. If there is no agreement among the candidates, the commission may then have to sift through ballot papers yet again and thus extend the wait for results which has already dragged on for over five weeks.
Senior aide Chris Mbanga represented Tsvangirai at Thursday’s meeting. Emmerson Mnangagwa or Patrick Chinamasa was expected to stand in for Mugabe.