HARARE, Zimbabwe — The ruling party said yesterday Robert Mugabe would fight to retain his 28-year grip on power in a runoff election with the opposition leader, and war veterans marched in the capital in a muscular show of support for the president.
A week after Morgan Tsvangirai’s opposition party made a strong showing at the polls, it was clear the 84-year-old Mr. Mugabe still had at his disposal the feared veterans of the bush war that helped end white minority rule, as well as having the backing of the equally feared security forces.
Offices of the main opposition party were ransacked Thursday and police detained foreign journalists.
Mr. Mugabe has ruled since his guerrilla army helped establish an independent Zimbabwe in 1980. But his popularity has been battered by an economic slide that followed the often-violent seizures of white-owned commercial farms in 2000.
With inflation in Zimbabwe soaring to more than 100,000 percent, authorities introduced a new bank note denominated at 50 million Zimbabwe dollars yesterday, state media said. The new note is worth $1 at the widely used black market trading rate and can buy just three loaves of bread.
While official results from the March 29 presidential election still had not been released, independent observers earlier projected a runoff, saying Mr. Tsvangirai won the most votes but not the 50 percent-plus-one majority needed for an outright victory.
The election commission announced more results yesterday in races for the 60 elected Senate seats, with the opposition winning 23 to the ruling party’s 20.
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party filed suit yesterday asking the courts to force the release of the presidential results, party spokesman Nelson Chamisa said.
The U.S. and other Western nations also have been pressing for the results to be announced.
The Zimbabwe Election Commission has continued to fail in its duties and fail the Zimbabwean people by not immediately providing the results of the presidential vote, State Department spokesman Tom Casey said. The longer they delay in this process, the more suspicious it becomes.
That the first official word of a runoff came from the ruling party, pre-empting results from the ostensibly independent election commission, underlines that Mr. Mugabe’s party is Zimbabwe’s most powerful authority.
We agreed to have a rerun at a date to be set by the commission, Didymus Mutasa, a Cabinet minister who also is secretary of Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) party, told reporters after a five-hour meeting of the party politburo.
Diplomats said Mr. Mugabe might try to delay the runoff for three months. The law requires a runoff within 21 days of the first round.
Earlier, police escorted about 400 war veterans as they paraded silently through downtown Harare. The veterans, who spearheaded the often-violent takeover of white farms in recent years, appeared to have been transported to town.
At a press conference, Jabulani Sibanda, head of the Zimbabwe War Veterans’ Association, said ZANU-PF lost the elections because people were pushed by hunger and illegal sanctions, echoing a theme of Mr. Mugabe’s campaign.
Under current circumstances the spirit of our people is being provoked, Mr. Sibanda said. We will be forced to defend our sovereignty.
ZANU-PF leaders sounded a similarly combative tone. After the politburo meeting, Mr. Mutasa accused the opposition of bribing electoral officials and said his party would contest results for 16 seats in parliament’s lower house — where the long-ruling party lost its majority, according to official results.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.