Saturday, August 3, 2013

Zimbabwe President Mugabe re-elected amid fraud claims

Zimbabwe President Mugabe re-elected amid fraud claims

 
Robert Mugabe (C) answers journalists questions after voting at a polling station at a school in Harare on 31 July

Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe has won a seventh term in office, officials say, amid claims of electoral fraud.

Mr Mugabe, 89, won 61% of the vote, against Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's 34%.

Mr Tsvangirai earlier said the elections for parliament and president were fraudulent and promised to take legal action.

He said his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) would no longer work with Mr Mugabe's Zanu-PF party.

The two parties have been working together in a coalition since the last election in 2008 sparked widespread violence.

Mr Mugabe has been president since Zimbabwe won independence from the UK in 1980.

Monitoring bodies were divided over the conduct of the election.

The largest group of domestic monitors, the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN), said problems with voter registration had left up to one million people unable to cast their ballots, most of them in MDC strongholds.

However, the African Union and Sadc broadly endorsed the election, saying it was free and peaceful.

On Saturday, one of the nine members of the election commission resigned over the way the election was conducted.

Commissioner Mkhululi Nyathi said in his resignation letter: "While throughout the whole process I retained some measure of hope that the integrity of the whole process could be salvaged along the way, this was not to be."


Source : bbc[dot]co[dot]uk

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