By AFP,
Harare : Zimbabwe’s opposition challenged Sunday a recount it said was loaded towards the ruling party as rigging allegations were traded and regional leaders failed to stem the deepening post-election crisis.
State media reported overnight that 23 out of Zimbabwe’s 210 constituencies would be recounted next Saturday, three weeks after general elections. The result of the presidential poll is still to be announced. The main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said it was mounting a legal challenge to the recount order, which in theory could lead to President Robert Mugabe’s ruling party regaining control of parliament.
At an emergency summit in Lusaka, Southern African leaders discussed the post-election impasse long into the night, but were always unlikely to find a swift solution after Mugabe decided to stay away. They stopped short of criticising the Zimbabwean government or Mugabe, who was not even mentioned in a four-page joint statement that called only for the result of the presidential poll to be delivered “expeditiously”.
Regional leaders have been chided for their reluctance to speak out against Mugabe, seen by many as an elder statesman who still reserves respect for his role in winning Zimbabwe’s independence.
Nevertheless many are fed up with the economic mess on their doorstep with inflation in Zimbabwe now well into six figures, unemployment at over 80 percent and average life expectancy down to 36 years of age.
Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai was in Lusaka trying to press his claim of outright victory in the March 29 presidential election and persuade summit participants to apply pressure on Mugabe to end his 28-year rule. His number two, MDC secretary general Tendai Biti, said the opposition was broadly happy with the outcome of the summit but expressed reservations over the continuation of South African President Thabo Mbeki’s role.
Mbeki was chief mediator between the governing ZANU-PF party and Tsvangirai’s MDC in the build-up to the election, but has come under fire for his policy of “quiet diplomacy”. On his way to Lusaka to join other leaders and delegations of the 14-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC), Mbeki dropped in on Harare and held his first face-to-face talks with Mugabe since the disputed elections.
“The body authorised to release the results is the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, let’s wait for them to announce the results,” he told journalists afterwards, insisting there was “no crisis” in his northern neighbour.
Mbeki must show “more vigour, more openness and a complete abandonment of the policy of quiet diplomacy,” Biti told journalists in Lusaka.
Meanwhile, Zimbabwe state television reported Saturday it had unearthed a secret document allegedly written by Biti and detailing plans by the MDC to rig the elections by paying off election officials.
While the focus in Zimbabwe had been on the long delay in releasing the presidential result, the overnight announcement of a recount turned the spotlight on the situation in parliament.
ZANU-PF lost parliamentary control to the opposition for the first time in the legislative vote with the MDC and its splinter faction winning a combined 109 seats to just 97 for the ruling party.
This means ZANU-PF need only take back nine seats in the recount to regain control. The vast majority of seats to be recounted were won by the MDC and many of them by only a slither of votes — in one case as few as 19.
“We are challenging the recount ordered by Zimbabwe Electoral Commission Commission which we believe is designed to reverse the will of the people,” MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa told AFP. “The truth of the matter is that we won and we are not going to co-operate with ZEC on this recount. The results that were announced are the correct ones and we will not accept any attempt to reverse that.”
A Harare high court judge is scheduled on Monday to rule on MDC’s petition demanding an immediate release of the presidential election results.
With the opposition calling a general strike from Tuesday, Information Minister Sikhoanyiso Ndlovu said the army would not intervene and rejected MDC claims that the country was being run by a military junta.
“I believe everyone in the country is aware that there is no military junta. The soldiers are in the barracks where they belong,” Ndlovu told The Sunday Mail, a state-run weekly.
Meanwhile, Tsvangirai had to pull out of a visit Monday to Johannesburg, where he was to brief journalists on the crisis, and will instead visit Mozambique for private meetings, his spokesman told AFP.