Zimbabwean President Mnangagwa re-elected after tense contest | cnn

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Zimbabwe’s incumbent President Emmerson Mnangagwa was declared the winner of the country’s presidential election on Saturday after winning an absolute majority in a tense presidential contest marred by delays.

“The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission has announced the results of the 2023 presidential election. His Excellency President Emmerson Mnangagwa was declared the winner with 2,350,711 votes, representing 52.6% of the vote, followed by Nelson Chamisa from the party Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC), which polled 1,906,734, representing 44% of the vote,” Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Information reported. he tweeted on Saturday.

The 80-year-old’s victory extends Zanu-PF’s decades-long stranglehold on Zimbabwean politics, having been the country’s dominant party since it gained independence from Britain in 1980.

Chamisa, 45, had been optimistic about victory, and now he has rejected the results announced by the electoral body. It is not immediately known if he will file a legal challenge.

His party previously denounced the late deployment of election materials that caused widespread delays in the vote and also cited some alleged irregularities in the voting process.

in a statement On Wednesday, the CCC said some of its candidates were omitted from ballot papers, which in some cases, it added, were printed with photos of the ruling party’s candidates on CCC lists.

The electoral commission did not respond to those accusations.

Voting continued for a second day in parts of Zimbabwe, where elections started late on Wednesday. A presidential decree extended voting until Thursday in three provinces, including the capital Harare, where Chamisa’s party enjoys popular support.

Observers praised the peaceful conduct of the elections, but said the electoral process did not meet many regional and international standards.

The European Union Electoral Observation Mission (EU EOM) said in a preliminary report The government published on Friday that “fundamental freedoms were increasingly restricted” during the elections, adding that “acts of violence and intimidation” were also witnessed during the elections, giving rise to a “climate of fear”.

About 40 election observers were arrested by Zimbabwe police on Thursday for allegedly coordinating the release of the results before the final count of the ballots.

Human rights group Amnesty International saying The arrests came “after the Zimbabwe NGO Forum released a report detailing the irregularities they had observed on election day.”

This was the second election in Zimbabwe since the army ousted authoritarian leader Robert Mugabe in 2017.

Mnangagwa, nicknamed “The Crocodile”, succeeded Mugabe after helping orchestrate the coup that toppled him. He maintained his grip on power the following year, when he defeated Chamisa in a hard-fought presidential election.

In those 2018 elections, Mnangagwa garnered 51% of the total vote while Chamisa garnered 44%. The results were disputed by Chamisa, who described the elections as “fraudulent and illegal” and filed a legal challenge. However, Mnangagwa was sworn in after Zimbabwe’s constitutional court confirmed his victory.

Analysts said the outcome of the last election was easier to predict. “I’m not sure this is a game-changing election,” said Eldred Masunungure, an expert on politics and governance at the University of Zimbabwe. “I don’t see any sign or indication that this is a crucial election,” he told CNN ahead of Wednesday’s election.

Mnangagwa’s Zanu-PF party also told CNN it expected to win by a landslide. “We are going to defeat the opposition,” said his national spokesman, Chris Mutsvangwa, on the eve of the elections.

“It will be a landslide victory against the opposition,” he added.