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Zimbabwe Officials Say Runoff Election Needed

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The New York Times

Published: May 3, 2008

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - After more than a month's delay, Zimbabwe's Election Commission officially announced the results of the disputed March 29 presidential elections on Friday, saying that the opposition candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, had won more votes than the incumbent president, Robert Mugabe, but not enough to avoid a runoff.

Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, won 47.9 percent of the vote to Mugabe's 43.2 percent, the election officials said. The third major candidate, Simba Makoni, who broke away from the governing party to run as an independent, took 8.3 percent of the vote, officials said.

Nelson Chamisa, a spokesman for the opposition, immediately denounced election officials for short-circuiting the vote verification process and "arrogantly" releasing the final tallies before the opposition had a chance to protest them. He was noncommittal, however, on whether Tsvangirai would participate in a runoff. No date has been announced for one.

"They did not verify the results," Chamisa said. "They did not give us an opportunity to contest the results. They are waylaying the people's will."

The opposition maintains it won the election outright with 50.3 percent of the vote, while ministers in Mugabe's Cabinet have for weeks said a runoff would be necessary.

Both the opposition's figures and those of the government fall within the range of outcomes - 47 percent to 51.8 percent - that an alliance of civic groups called the Zimbabwe Election Support Network said were plausible based on publicly posted tallies at 435 of 9,400 polling stations.

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