“Official” Zimbabwe results coming in: First Thought
My interview, it seems, is not until 3.30. I therefore have some time.
Look here.
The Electoral Commission claims the 24 parliamentary constituencies to declare so far in the country were split equally between Zanu-PF and the MDC. There are 186 to go.
It’s clearly too early to comment in depth. So far, though, this seems vaguely plausible: Mugabe’s wins were among the rural constituencies where, if he was going to win any votes, he’d win them. It is quite possible that Zanu-PF did win those constituencies on the popular vote.
However - this delay is suspicious, deeply so. It could be indicative of two factors: gross under-competency and rigging. Both are possible, if not likely. Counting has been going on by candle-light, Zimbabwe is a large country, there may be a shortage of counters, etc, etc. It’s possible that human error is, in part, responsible for the delay.
But if the authorities were going to stuff ballot boxes, or lose several thousand opposition votes in one go, or figure in all those dead people on the electoral roll, now would be the time they’ll do it.
Of course, there could be another reason for the delay. At this very moment, Mugabe could really do with opposition activists doing something stupid and making the first, violent move. That would give him a pre-text to accuse the MDC of cheating, and launch a crack-down without actually finishing the election.
Delaying the results this much could serve to do that. Grassroots MDC supporters must be getting increasingly frustrated at the delay, when they know Zanu-PF could be using it to rig the vote. The temptation to just do something must be fairly strong. Could this delay be targetted at making just a few angry voters do that something?
Interesting also are the reactions of independent bodies. SADC (SouthernAfrica Development Community) are split over the election - the majority of members claim the election was, “peaceful and credible,” while two reject it as, “deeply flawed.” Are certain SADC members being more honest or looking deeper than others - or was the election simply different in different parts of the country? I do wonder.
The Independent Results Centre in Harare, meanwhile, is claiming a heavy victory for Tsvangirai - 57%, enough to avoid a run-off. While this does seem a likel result, I do wonder how reliable their data is. Presumably it’s based on exit polls - which, given the presence of police at some polling stations, might be somewhat hard to judge by…
But we’ll see.
I would imagine that the results they are using are the ones posted outside the polling station after the count and so they should be pretty accurate.
They are the count from each polling station for each ward.
Wish they would hurry up though
As the opposition have said, the longer it takes the more chance of rigging. It is interesting that it is generally believed that Mugabe has lost; the media embargo seems to be a little lacking.
It’s nice to see we have readers in Africa. Truly international