EU and US express concern over Mugabe’s election win

The EU and the US have expressed their concerns after Robert Mugabe was declared the winner of Zimbabwe’s presidential election yesterday with 2,110,434 votes, giving him 61 per cent of the total, removing the need for a run-off.

Mr Tsvangirai, said he would challenge in court a result he called a fraud that would push the nation back into crisis.

Mr Mugabe (89) who has ruled the former British colony in southern Africa since its independence in 1980, was formally proclaimed re-elected for a five-year term barely an hour after Mr Tsvangirai announced his planned legal challenge.

“We are going to go to court, we are going to go to the AU (African Union), we are going to go to the SADC (Southern African Development Community),” Mr Tsvangirai angrily told a news conference in Harare.

While African observers from the AU and SADC have already broadly approved the vote, independent domestic monitors have described it as vitiated by registration problems that may have disenfranchised up to a million people.

The US, which has imposed sanctions on Mr Mugabe over previous flawed elections and alleged abuses of power, said the evidence of irregularities in the July 31st vote indicated the result was “the culmination of a deeply flawed process”.

“The United States does not believe that the results announced today represent a credible expression of the will of the Zimbabwean people,” US secretary of state John Kerry said in a statement.

The European Union also expressed its concern. Western election observers were kept out by Harare.

Zimbabwe’s Election Commission announced Mr Mugabe had beaten Mr Tsvangirai with just over 61 per cent of the votes, against nearly 34 per cent for Tsvangirai.

“Mugabe, Robert Gabriel, of Zanu-PF party, is therefore declared duly elected president of the Republic of Zimbabwe with effect of today,” commission head Rita Makarau told a news conference, drawing cheers from Zanu-PF supporters.

SADC observers have urged Mr Tsvangirai to accept the result.

Mr Tsvangirai, who had been serving as prime minister in a fractious unity government under Mr Mugabe, said the MDC would present evidence in court to back its charges that the July 31st vote was a “monumental fraud”.

“I thought this election was going to resolve this political crisis. It has not. It has failed. It has plunged the country back to where it was,” Tsvangirai said.

Responding to the criticism, Mr Mugabe’s campaign manager Emmerson Mnangagwa, who is also defence minister, said the MDC had the “democratic right to do the wrong thing”. But he added: “The route they are taking will make sure that their political careers are buried and buried for good.”

Mr Mugabe’s contested victory has raised fears that a fragile economic recovery under the unity government could falter and that foreign investors may shy away from ZANU-PF’s drive - already initiated - to seize majority stakes in foreign firms such as mining companies and banks.

US secretary of state Kerry urged the AU and SADC to address the concerns.

“There were irregularities in the provision and composition of the voters roll. The parties had unequal access to state media. The security sector did not safeguard the electoral process on an even-handed basis,” he said in his statement.

Mr Kerry called on all parties to refrain from violence.

One member of Zimbabwe’s nine-member Electoral Commission, Mkhululi Nyathi, has resigned since the vote, citing doubts about the integrity of the results.

Given the sanctions, the reaction from the West will be key to the future of Zimbabwe’s economy, which is still struggling with the aftermath of a decade-long slump and hyperinflation that ended in 2009 when the Zimbabwe dollar was scrapped.

Reuters