STELLA MAPENZAUSWA, Harare | Tuesday
ZIMBABWES opposition, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), says its defeat in a violence-wracked parliamentary by-election by the ruling party of President Robert Mugabe is a victory of evil over that which is good.
The by-election, in the rural constituency of Bikita West, 330km southeast of Harare, was seen as a key test of Mugabes Zanu-PF partys support in rural Zimbabwe before next year’s presidential ballot.
Retired army colonel Claudius Makova won the vote by 12_993 votes to 7_001 for Boniface Pakai of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). The Bikita result reduces to 56 the number of seats the MDC holds in parliament.
The MDC’s Learnmore Jongwe could not say whether his party would accept the result, but said the MDC would issue a detailed statement this week.
The MDC won the seat, in one of Zanu-PF’s traditional strongholds, in the June 2000 general election but it fell vacant in November when its member of parliament died.
Analysts had said an MDC victory could be a sign that the opposition was making inroads into rural areas after making a near clean sweep of urban seats in June.
Officials said voting at the weekend had been mostly peaceful, apart from the arrest on Saturday of three MDC supporters for allegedly stoning the vehicle of Chenjerai Hunzvi, leader of the self-styled liberation war veterans who invaded white-owned farms in the run-up to the June poll.
Mugabe’s Zanu-PF, which has ruled since the former Rhodesia won independence from Britain in 1980, has now boosted to 63 the number of seats it holds out of a total of 120. It enjoys a larger majority through 30 additional deputies appointed by Mugabe.
The opposition, which poses the greatest challenge to Mugabe’s 20-year hold on power, is contesting the validity of 39 of the seats Zanu-PF won in the June poll.
This week the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear a challenge by the MDC against an amendment to the electoral act Mugabe’s administration passed in December, which says courts cannot nullify the results of electoral results ”even if corrupt or illegal practices were committed”. – Reuters