President Robert Mugabe is under growing pressure to recognise defeat in Zimbabwe’s presidential election as the opposition held talks with military and security officials on Tuesday.
The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) declined to discuss details of contacts with the military, but one party source said that the MDC was in touch with senior officers, which shows that support for Mugabe within the ruling Zanu-PF is beginning to erode after the shock of what appears to be a comprehensive defeat in Saturday’s presidential and parliamentary elections.
Mugabe’s security cabinet decided on Sunday night not to recognise defeat after the state election commission forewarned the president that he had lost the vote.
MDC officials said the accounts they received of that meeting hours later had the party worried that the government might cancel the election and arrest opposition leaders, or that the military might intervene.
On Monday, MDC presidential candidate Morgan Tsvangirai approached former army chief Solomon Mujuru, who is still a powerful figure within the military, to say the MDC was prepared to reassure the security establishment that a transfer of power would not lead to prosecutions for past crimes or a purge.
The MDC also reached out to more moderate elements of Zanu-PF, including MPs with whom it has had a working relationship.
”Mugabe and some of those around him decided to try to brazen it out by fixing the results,” said a senior MDC source. ”But Zanu-PF is not united. It has taken a big blow that it didn’t expect and there are important people in the party who recognise that they cannot go against the will of the people. They are shocked and do not have the spirit to go down fighting for Mugabe.”
Senior Zanu-PF officials have conceded that Mugabe may have lost to Tsvangirai in the presidential ballot but that the vote was so close there would have to be a run-off election.
The MDC continued to say that Tsvangirai has the outright majority necessary for a first-round win. The party says its calculations give it 60% of the presidential vote to 30% for Mugabe. Independent poll monitors give Tsvangirai between 50% and 55% of the vote.
But the MDC’s election strategists said they were preparing for a run-off, which they believe Tsvangirai would win by drawing on the support of other opposition candidates who would be out of the race.
Although there are still no results from the presidential poll three days after the vote, the election commission continued its slow release of returns from the parliamentary election.
Of the 132 seats declared, Zanu-PF had won 64 and the MDC 62. Six others went to a breakaway faction of the MDC. Three government ministers have lost their seats.
But Zanu-PF had a substantial lead in the total number of votes cast — 480 000 to 400 000 for the MDC from the first 90 seats — leading the opposition to conclude that the electoral commission is gradually loading the results of the presidential election in favour of Mugabe. — guardian.co.uk Â