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President Mugabe not ready to step aside: spokesman

Zimbabwe's ruling party geared up for a final battle to save Robert Mugabe's 28-year presidency, saying yesterday it was ready for an election run-off with opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

While state media said a run-off was now the most likely outcome after no clear winner emerged from Saturday's election, a government spokesman said Mugabe's party was ready for a new battle in the second round.

Tsvangirai's opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has already declared its leader passed the 50 percent threshold needed to avoid a run-off and took control of parliament in the early hours of the morning.

While diplomatic sources said intense negotiations were under way to persuade Mugabe to exit gracefully after 28 years in power, Deputy Information Minister Bright Matonga indicated Mugabe was in no mood to step aside.

“ZANU-PF is ready for a run-off, we are ready for a resulting victory,” said Matonga, who is also a leading ZANU-PF deputy.

He said the party had “let the president down” in the first round and had not diverted enough energy into its campaign.

“In terms of strategy, we only applied 25 percent of our energy into this campaign ... That [the run-off] is when we are going to unleash the other 75 percent that we did not apply in the first case,” he said.

The electoral commission wrapped up final results of the parliamentary contest in the early hours, giving the MDC 109 seats against 97 for ZANU-PF.

The situation is slightly complicated by a split in the MDC ranks, with 10 of the newly elected lawmakers part of a rebel faction.

But while the parliamentary election has now been decided, there has still been no news on the outcome of the simultaneous presidential contest.

Representatives of the candidates were scheduled to meet yesterday with electoral commission officials to witness the verification of the results, commission sources said.

However, results were expected to be announced at the very latest by the end of today, the sources said.

The commission is first scheduled to announce the outcome of the contest for the largely toothless upper house of parliament, the senate.

Frustrated with the silence from the commission, the MDC pre-emptively released its own results on Wednesday indicating that Tsvangirai had won the presidency outright with 50.2 percent of votes against 43.8 percent for Mugabe.
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