Zimbabwe's ruling party yesterday steamrolled to an election victory, winning enough seats to secure a two-thirds majority in the 150-member parliament and strengthen President Robert Mugabe's 25-year hold on power.
Mugabe, in power since independence in 1980, will be able to use the huge majority to change the Constitution, giving him free rein as he prepares to retire in 2008.
His Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) won 74 seats, which along with 30 presidential appointees gave the party enough clout to vote in the key changes in parliament, results showed.
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) picked up 40 seats, mostly in Harare and Zimbabwe's second city of Bulawayo, its traditional strongholds, according to incomplete results from the electoral commission.
But MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai slammed the outcome of the elections as "disgusting, massive fraud" and accused the 81-year-old Mugabe of treating Zimbabwe "like his property."
He cited discrepancies in several constituencies between the number of voters and the final tally announced by the elections commission, citing as an example the district of Manyame near the capital Harare, where a 10,000-vote gap existed between the number of voters and the final tally.
"He [Mugabe] is going to do what he wants, this is his private property and for people to even claim that this is a democratic process, when it is so fraudulent, is totally not acceptable," Tsvangirai said on Friday.
Britain and the US also criticized the elections as neither free nor fair, while a group of southern African observers led by regional power South Africa issued a statement that described the elections as "open, transparent and professional."
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called on Zimbabwe "to recognize the legitimacy of the opposition and abandon policies designed to repress, crush and otherwise stifle expressions of differences in Zimbabwe."
Former colonial ruler Britain described the vote as "seriously flawed," with Foreign Secretary Jack Straw saying Mugabe had "yet again denied ordinary Zimbabweans a free and fair opportunity to vote, further prolonging the political and economic crisis he has inflicted on their country."
Mugabe has said that he wants to use the two-thirds majority to create a senate and bring in some of the changes that were contained in a draft constitution that was defeated in a referendum in 2000.
"It means that the ruling party and the president can change the Constitution willy-nilly. It's as simple as that," said Reginald Matchaba-Hove of the Zimbabwe Election Support Network.
"He now has a free rein. He may or may not want to listen to the opposition," he said.
Police warned Zimbabweans against engaging in violence and said it was setting up roadblocks and stepping up patrols across the country in the wake of the elections.
"We remain determined to ensure that peace, safety and security prevails in this post-election period," said Mary Masango, senior assistant police commissioner.
The parliamentary elections on Thursday passed off peacefully, in marked contrast to the previous polls in 2000 and 2002 that left scores dead and many more beaten, mostly opposition supporters.
ZANU-PF scored gains from the 2000 elections when it picked up 62 seats, relying again on the rural vote, in particular from the northern Mashonaland region, to score the major victory.
But Mugabe suffered a personal blow when Jonathan Moyo, a former close aide whom he accused of betraying him in a succession row last year, won his seat as an independent candidate in the rural southern district of Tsholotsho.
Zimbabwe has been in the throes of crises for the past five years, facing food shortages and struggling with sky-high unemployment in what was formerly one of Africa's most promising economies.
Mugabe's government admitted for the first time last month that it would begin importing corn meal, the national staple, to feed some 1.5 million needy citizens.
The food shortages are partly blamed on Mugabe's land reform program that saw thousands of white-owned farms seized and distributed to landless blacks five years ago.
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