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Mugabe fighting biggest battle after poll defeat |
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There was still no official word on the result of Zimbabwe's presidential election on Thursday as Robert Mugabe fought to survive the biggest crisis of his 28-year rule. |
No results have emerged from last Saturday's key vote but the electoral commission said Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF had lost control of parliament for the first time in nearly three decades.
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change said its tallies showed Mugabe had also lost the presidential vote and said he should concede defeat.
Respected South African financial daily Business Day reported that Mugabe had admitted to family and advisers that he had lost and was weighing up whether to throw in the towel or contest a runoff against MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai.
The MDC says Tsvangirai has won the absolute majority needed to avoid a runoff but ZANU-PF and independent projections say he will fall short.
"Mugabe has conceded to his closest advisers, the army, police and intelligence chiefs. He has also told his family and personal advisers that he has lost the election," Business Day quoted an unidentified source as saying.
The newspaper said hardliners in Mugabe's government wanted him to see the contest through to the bitter end but personal advisers and his family want Mugabe to quit. Analysts believe he will go down fighting in a runoff.
Mugabe's aides have angrily dismissed the MDC's claim that it had won the presidential poll, hinting the opposition could be punished for publishing its own tallies despite warnings this would be regarded as an attempted coup.
Mugabe, known for his fierce and defiant rhetoric, has not been seen in public since voting.
Harare's U.N. ambassador said Mugabe had no intention of living outside Zimbabwe.
Asked by BBC television if he would go to another country to spend his retirement, Boniface Chidyausiku said:
"Robert Mugabe is Zimbabwean. Born, bred in Zimbabwe. He has lived his life to work for Zimbabwe. Why should he choose another country?"
FINAL RESULTS
Final results of the election for parliament's lower house showed the MDC won 99 seats. ZANU-PF won 97 and a breakaway MDC faction won 10. One independent candidate won a seat. The outcome of the senate vote will be issued next.
All the signs are that Mugabe, a liberation war leader still respected in Africa, is in the worst trouble of his rule after facing an unprecedented challenge in the elections.
Widely blamed for the economic collapse of his once prosperous nation, Mugabe has faced growing discontent with the world's highest inflation rate of more than 100,000 percent, a virtually worthless currency and severe food and fuel shortages.
Hopes of a peaceful transition to power in Zimbabwe helped lift neighbouring South Africa's rand currency on Thursday as investors saw a positive impact on the region.
"I think that (Zimbabwe) certainly has the most influence on the rand at the moment," a Johannesburg-based trader said. "So there is potential for the rand to strengthen further if there is a peaceful transition."
Millions of economic refugees have fled Zimbabwe's misery into South Africa, many of them illegally.
The opposition and international observers said Mugabe rigged the last presidential election in 2002. But analysts say discontent over daily hardships is too great for him to fix the result this time without risking major unrest.
The mainstream MDC faction said Tsvangirai had won 50.3 percent of the presidential vote and Mugabe 43.8 percent according to its own tallies.
Zimbabwe's state-run Herald newspaper said ZANU-PF and Tsvangirai's MDC had agreed their candidates or chief election agents would be present at the start of the presidential vote count once results come in from provinces.
"We therefore would like to urge the nation to remain patient as we go through this meticulous verification process," the newspaper's Web site quoted Zimbabwe Electoral Commission chief elections officer Lovemore Sekeramayi as saying.
Jonathan Moyo, Mugabe's former information minister who is now an independent in parliament, said authorities were not coping with defeat. Security chiefs, who have said they would not accept an opposition victory, were anxious.
"You have generals who unwisely, or rather foolishly, told the world that they would only salute one candidate, who happened to have lost the election," he told reporters.
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