Zambian opposition leader Michael Sata has drawn ahead of acting President Rupiah Banda in the presidential election, according to preliminary results from around 13 percent of constituencies released on Friday.
Sata, who heads the Patriotic Front, had 187 863 votes versus 96 325 votes for Banda, election officials announced.
The tally was based on counting in 19 of the country’s 150 constituencies. Africa’s biggest copper producer voted on Thursday to choose a successor to Levy Mwanawasa, who died in August after suffering a stroke.
Sata has accused the ruling party of rigging the vote.
Leon Myburgh, a Johannesburg-based analyst who covers sub-Saharan Africa for Citigroup, said it was no surprise that Sata was leading in early results.
”It is to be expected. Sata’s support is in the urban areas and results in those areas are usually counted first. This is what happened in 2006, then he was also ahead early,” Myburgh said.
Sata, who portrays himself as a champion of the poor and said during the campaign that if elected he would move to get foreign companies to sell equity stakes to Zambians, lost the 2006 presidential elections against Mwanawasa.
The country’s largest independent election monitoring group said on Friday the election had been generally peaceful but there were some instances of voting irregularities.
The winner faces the formidable task of matching Mwanawasa’s strong record of fiscal discipline, praised by Western donors, and cracking down on corruption, two rare successes in Africa.
Banda, a prominent businessman with wide government experience, has campaigned as a steady hand who can keep Mwanawasa’s business-friendly policies going in the world’s 10th largest copper producer.
The vote is seen as a test of Zambia’s commitment to multi-party democracy, restored in 1990 after 18 years of one-party rule under Kenneth Kaunda, but neither Banda nor Sata is expected to reshape the political landscape dramatically.
The only published opinion poll, released by the African market information group Steadman, showed Sata with 46% support, well ahead of Banda with 32%. Sata narrowly lost the 2006 presidential election to Mwanawasa.
Banda is hoping to benefit from Zambia’s relative prosperity as well as Mwanawasa’s enduring popularity. The economy has grown at an average of 5% per year since 2002, boosted by the sharp rise in world commodity prices.
But 65% of Zambia’s 12-million people live on less than $1 a day and more than one million are HIV positive.
Inflation has fallen from more than 200 percent in 1991 to about 14%. – Reuters 2008