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| Africa Subsaharan |
| Zimbabwe poll heads to runoff -- projections |
| 2008-04-02 |
| Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai will beat President Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe's crucial election, but be forced into a runoff vote in three weeks, according to a ruling party projection. Two ZANU-PF party sources said on Tuesday the projection showed Tsvangirai falling short of the 51 percent needed for outright victory. It was similar to projections by an independent monitoring group. No official results have yet emerged on Saturday's presidential poll. The opposition charges that the delay veils attempts by Mugabe to hang on to power by rigging the vote. Mugabe, in power for 28 years, faced his most formidable challenge in the election, with both Tsvangirai and third candidate Simba Makoni, a former finance minister, accusing him of reducing the population to misery by wrecking Zimbabwe's economy. Official results on Tuesday showed ZANU-PF with a narrow lead of two seats in the parliamentary poll with 131 out of 210 constituencies declared. But a breakaway opposition party took another five seats. A third government minister lost his seat and results showed the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) making some inroads into Mugabe's traditional rural strongholds. Two senior government sources who asked not to be named said their projections showed Tsvangirai getting 48.3 percent, against Mugabe's 43 percent, with Makoni taking eight percent. "What this means is that we are looking at a re-run because he did not win with a margin of over 51 percent that would have given him the job straight away," one of the sources said. A projection by the independent Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) had Tsvangirai taking 49.4 percent and Mugabe 41.8 percent with Makoni on 8.2. |
| Posted by:Fred |