It's still close as can be

As  the wheels of democracy grind agonizingly onwards, here's a quick round-up of the official results, the projections, and the rumours as they stand at this time

Harare, Zimbabwe, Tuesday, April 1  3.30 pm

With just 79 more parliamentary seats to be officially announced by the Electoral Commission, the parties are apparently still neck and neck, as follows:

Zanu-PF  64 seats

Movement for Democratic Change  67 seats.

The ZEC has still given no figures for the election of the President, which has become a two-horse race between Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai. But two projections, one by the independent Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) and one by two anonymous Zanu-PF sources, are remarkably similar. They are as follows:

ZESN :  Tsvangirai  49.4 per cent    Mugabe  41.8 per cent

Zanu-PF sources:  Tsvangirai 48.3 per cent  Mugabe  43 per cent

Both sets of results would, if correct, result in a run-off vote between the two, to take place within the next three weeks.

The MDC is sticking to its own forecast for the presidential vote, as follows:

Tsvangirai  60 per cent. Mugabe 30 per cent.

Comments

[Jaden]

I have heard that MDC was holding a press conference about now regarding the possible resignation of Mugabe. Does anyone know about this?

[ShowsOn]

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/imagedata/0,,5965273,00.jpg

"The Guardian reported that a crisis meeting of Mugabe's security cabinet decided to block the Opposition from taking power, but was divided between using a military takeover to annul the vote and falsifying the results.

The British newspaper said Zimbabwean sources who had heard first-hand accounts of the Joint Operations Command meeting of senior military and intelligence officers and top party officials on Sunday night had said Mugabe favoured immediately declaring himself president again but was persuaded to use the electoral commission to keep the opposition from power.

"It was decided to use the (election commission) process of drip, drip where you release results over a long period, giving the opposition gains at first but as time wears on ZANU-PF pulls ahead," a diplomatic source was quoted as saying."