President Robert Mugabe’s ruling party held on to a parliamentary seat, winning a by-election by default after the main opposition party boycotted the poll to demand electoral reforms, election officials said on Saturday.
Ruling Zanu-PF candidate Walter Mzembi was declared the unopposed winner of the by-election in the Masvingo district of southern Zimbabwe, a seat left vacant after the death on August 22 of the ruling party’s 69-year-old founder, Eddison Zvobgo.
Masvingo constituency registrar Ignatius Mushangwe declared Mzembi (41) the winner after a second candidate from the little-known Zimbabwe Youths in Alliance party failed to submit adequate poll nomination papers by the Friday deadline, state radio reported.
Mzembi’s entry to the 150-seat Parliament does not change the power balance. Zvobgo had held the seat for the ruling party since independence from Britain in 1980.
It was the second election in a month that Zimbabwe’s main opposition party had sat out in protest.
In September, the ruling party won an unopposed seat in the Seke district after the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) announced it will boycott all future elections until the government reforms unfair electoral laws, ends political violence and repeals repressive media and security laws.
The opposition won 57 of the 120 elected seats in the last national Parliament vote in 2000, but has lost six in special elections since then.
Under the Constitution, Mugabe appoints 30 of the 150 lawmakers, giving the ruling party an overwhelming majority.
Independent observers said the 2000 election and a presidential vote in 2002 were swayed in favour of Mugabe and his party by intimidation and vote rigging.
The Zanu-PF party holds 98 of 150 seats in Parliament — two short of the two-thirds majority needed to amend the Constitution.
A tiny opposition group, the Zimbabwe African National Union-Ndonga party, has one seat.
MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai has demanded the government meet regional electoral standards of the 14-nation Southern African Development Community, which include the formation an independent commission to oversee future polls, replacing the state-appointed body that now organises elections.
The government has promised some electoral reforms, but the opposition has dismissed them as cosmetic changes that still allow Mugabe and ruling-party lawmakers to appoint members of the supervisory commission.
Zimbabwe has been racked by political and economic troubles since February 2000, when Mugabe was resoundingly defeated in a referendum on a new Constitution that would have entrenched his rule.
The seizure of thousands of white-owned farms for handing over to blacks after the referendum disrupted the agriculture-based economy and led to record unemployment and inflation.
Mugabe, who says the land seizures were to correct colonial-era land-ownership imbalances, accused white landowners of financing the main opposition party and his opponents in the referendum campaign. — Sapa-AP