Opposition Refuses Runoff in Zimbabwe Presidential Election

Electoral officials say Zimbabwe's opposition leader won 47.9 percent of votes in presidential elections — not enough to avoid a run-off against longtime ruler President Robert Mugabe.

The Electoral Commission says that Mugabe won 43.2 percent of votes. It said it would announce a date for a run-off election later.

The commission had long delayed Friday's announcement of the results from the March 29 balloting.

Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai says he won the vote outright and will not campaign in a run-off. He charges that Mugabe has used the delay to prosecute a campaign of violence to scare voters from further opposing his rule.

Zimbabwe's opposition will reject official results from a March 29 presidential election that appear to give no candidate an outright majority, a senior opposition figure told AFP on Friday.

"It appears ZEC (Zimbabwe's Electoral Commission) is determined to announce its results that will certainly be rejected by us," Chris Mbanga said on the sidelines of all-party talks hosted by the commission in Harare.

"We will reject simply because we'll not have finished the verification exercise," said Mbanga, an aide to opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who claims to have won an outright victory against Robert Mugabe.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught up in an escapable network of mutuality. Whatever affects one directly affects one indirectly.

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It has been more than a month since Zimbabwe had their presidential and parliamentary elections. The official election results have still not been declared with regards to the presidential election. Most of the parliamentary constituencies have had their results declared with few constituencies still to be decided by the electoral commission and the law courts. One does not need to be a PHD holder to know that the incumbent president-Robert Mugabe and his party Zanu PF has lost the presidential polls. The attempt by democracy.