The Sunday Mail s
aid the recount of 18 of 23 contested seats confirmed the initial results.
Even if the opposition lost the last five districts, it would still hold the majority in parliament for the first time since independence from Britain in 1980.
Original results of the March 29 elections showed that opposition groups won 110 seats to President Robert Mugabe party's 97. Three seats are vacant, awaiting by-elections after the deaths of candidates.
The Sunday Mail newspaper, a government mouthpiece, said the state Electoral Commission planned to invite Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai or their polling agents to a final "verification and collation exercise" on their presidential tallies on Monday.
"The process of feeding recounted statistics into our systems has already begun. We trust by Monday, April 28 this process will have been concluded," said Judge George Chiweshe, head of the electoral commission, the paper reported.
After that, tallies from the presidential race would be scrutinized by the candidates or their representatives before results are given, he said.
Leaving room for a further delay, Chiweshe said election authorities agreed each party would collate its own figures during the final verification stage.
The electoral commission on Saturday confirmed the results in 10 disputed parliamentary votes: six seats were taken by the opposition and
four by Mugabe's ZANU-PF party in the March 29 election.
Tallies from the additional eight recounted seats have not been released but Chiweshe told reporters Saturday there were no significant differences between the two counts, effectively confirming the opposition's control of the main 210-seat House of Assembly.
Mugabe, believed to have lost the presidential race, has been accused of using delays, fraud and violence to hold onto power. Even if he retains the presidency, he will have to deal with a defiant parliament.
The opposition and an independent Zimbabwean observer group say the opposition also won the presidential race, basing their conclusions on their own surveys of results posted at individual polling stations. But electoral laws require a presidential run-off if neither main candidate won more than 50 percent of the vote.
On Friday, security forces raided the offices of the opposition and the independent observers, seizing materials related to the count.
Police confirmed Saturday that they arrested 215 people in a raid on opposition headquarters in Harare.
They also said they searched the offices of the observer group, the independent Zimbabwe Election Support Network, looking for evidence that the Western-funded organization bribed state election officials to rig polling results.
The oppositions said those arrested were seeking refuge in the capital Harare after being attacked by ruling party loyalists in the countryside.
Human rights lawyer Alec Muchadehama said 24 children, "some still suckling," were among the detained and that there were reports of widespread beatings in police stations.
Hundreds of opposition supporters have been abducted, tortured and assaulted in recent weeks in what independent religious and human rights groups call a violent crackdown on dissent.
The clampdown and delay in announcing the presidential results has prompted international condemnation.
America's top envoy on Africa, Jendayi Frazer, was Sunday in Zambia, whose president has been unusually critical of his Zimbabwean counterpart. Frazer has called for regional leaders to demand an end to intimidation by security forces and to work with the United States to find a peaceful solution to the crisis.
Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa, a Mugabe loyalist, criticized Frazer for her statements earlier in the week backing claims that Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai beat Mugabe in the presidential vote, Zimbabwean state media reported Saturday.
Though presidential results had not been completed, tallies posted outside polling stations "point to a runoff" between Mugabe and Tsvangirai, he said.
From CNN
0 comments:
Post a Comment