Zambia's ruling party candidate Levy Mwanawasa maintained an early lead today in the closest presidential election since independence 37 years ago, but the opposition protested there was vote-rigging.
Latest results from the Electoral Commission, for 35 of 150 constituencies, gave 148,225 votes to Mwanawasa, President Frederick Chiluba's chosen heir, against 138,273 votes for businessman Anderson Mazoka.
"We are about to start our celebrations, said Vernon Mwaanga," spokesman for the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD), which has ruled the former British colony for the past decade.
Mr Mazoka refused to concede defeat however and lodged a protest at the Commission's offices against what he said was the slow pace of reporting results from Thursday's ballot.
"We believe the rigging is in process which is why there have been unprecedented delays in posting official results," Mr Mazoka, a 58-year-old former mining executive, told Reuters.
The first official results were released some 20 hours after vote counting began in the southern African copper-mining state, which suffers from high rates of poverty, unemployment and HIV/AIDS.
No official results from simultaneous parliamentary elections have been released yet, but many analysts are forecasting the new president will have to work with the country's first coalition government.
Thursday's vote was a logistical nightmare at many polling stations, where people waited up to 10 hours to cast their ballot. Turnout was estimated at a higher than expected 80 per cent of the 2.6 million registered voters.
"We are trying to release the results as soon as we have them," said Commission chairman Judge Bobby Bwalya.
"But the process of reporting, right from the returning officers to authentication by the Electoral Commission, is fairly long because we don't want to make mistakes," he said.
A government statement said the new president would now be sworn in next Wednesday instead of tomorrow as initially planned.