HARARE, Zimbabwe — Intruders ransacked offices of the main opposition party and police detained foreign journalists yesterday in a sign that President Robert Mugabe might turn to intimidation and violence in trying to stave off an electoral threat to his 28-year rule.
Earlier, Mr. Mugabe, 84, apparently launched his campaign for an expected runoff presidential ballot even before the official results of Saturday’s election were announced, with state media portraying the opposition as divided.
Five days after the vote, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission still had not released results of the presidential election despite increasing international pressure, including from former U.N. chief Kofi Annan, who recently mediated an end to Kenya’s postelection violence.
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) asserted that its leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, won the presidency outright, but it said it was prepared to compete in any runoff.
A day before the police raids, official results showed Mr. Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) party had lost control of parliament’s 210-member lower house. The election commission was slow on the 60 elected seats in the Senate, releasing the first returns late yesterday that gave five seats each to the opposition and ruling party.
MDC Secretary-General Tendai Biti said rooms at a Harare hotel used as offices by the opposition were ransacked by intruders who he thought were either police or agents of the feared Central Intelligence Organization.
“Mugabe has started a crackdown,” Mr. Biti said. “It is quite clear he has unleashed a war.”
Mr. Biti said Mr. Tsvangirai was “safe” but had canceled plans for a press conference.
In a further signal of the government’s hardening mood, heavily armed riot police surrounded and entered a Harare hotel housing foreign correspondents and took four of them, said a man answering the telephone at the hotel. Eight journalists were staying at the York Lodge.
Bill Keller, executive editor of the New York Times, said Times correspondent Barry Bearak, winner of a 2002 Pulitzer Prize, was one of those arrested. “An American consular official who visited him at the central police station reported that he was being held for ’violation of the journalism laws,’ ” Mr. Keller said.
Zimbabwean lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa said police had detained “quite a few” Americans and Britons, but no charges had been filed against them. She said some were being questioned individually by police but were not allowed to have attorneys present.
Seemingly laying the groundwork for a Mugabe runoff campaign, the state-run Herald newspaper said the ZANU-PF was running neck and neck with the opposition in the vote count, and it highlighted divisions among Mr. Mugabe’s foes.
Independent election observers said their projections based on election results posted at a representative sample of local polling stations indicated that Mr. Tsvangirai won the most votes in the presidential contest but not enough to avoid a runoff.
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