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By Penelope Paliani-Kamanga
The Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN), a group of 38 leading Zimbabwe civil society organizations and 8000 local observers has projected that Morgan Tsvangirai will emerge ahead of Robert Mugabe.
“Tsvangirai is projected to receive 49.4% the highest number of votes in the March 29, 2008 presidential election; Mugabe is projected to get 41.8% the second-highest number of votes; and, Herbert Stanley Simba Makoni is projected to receive 8.2%
the third-highest number of votes” said head of the Network Noel Kututwa on Tuesday.
Political analysts say that since the votes do not reach the required 51 plus one percent there might be need for a re-run between Tsvangirai and Mugabe.
The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission has so far announced 109 of the 210 parliamentary seats declared in favour the ruling party with 53 seats, and MDC lagging behind on 51 while Makoni’s got 5 seats. Results have continued to trickle in at a snail’s pace, leading to accusations from the MDC that the commission is deliberately sitting on results in a bid to fix the election in favour of Mugabe, who has ruled since independence from Britain in 1980.
The MDC’s own tally of votes in 128 of the 210 parliamentary seats showed that Tsvangirai had secured 60 per cent of votes against 30 for Mugabe in the presidential race. The party also calculated that it had won 96 out of the same constituencies, with only 106 needed for an overall majority in parliament.
ZEC said it would later announce the much-awaited outcome of the presidential vote, the MDC claimed yesterday that its leader had already taken an unassailable 60 per cent lead, based on unofficial results it tallied.
“But Kututwa, said “The public needs to know, everyone is anxious to know who their next president is going to be.”
He said they used information gathered by accredited observers from a random representative sample of polling stations in all provinces of the country.
‘This technique, known as Sample Based Observation (SBO), is a proven methodology used worldwide to build confidence in the electoral process. It has been used in over 20 countries including Zambia , Madagascar and Malawi .”
Kutukwa said that in order to give the people of Zimbabwe confidence in the conduct of the tabulation process and the degree to which the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) results reflect the will of the people, trained and accredited ZESN observers collected official vote counts from a representative random sample of polling stations across the ten provinces of the country.
Kututwa said the sample is stratified by province and urban/rural areas to ensure that the findings are representative. An independent statistician reviewed the exercise to ensure it meets the highest statistical standards.
Kututwa said that while it was the responsibility of ZEC to announce the official results of the election, it was a legal duty of election observers to provide the people of Zimbabwe with independent non-partisan information on all aspects of the electoral to provide the people of Zimbabwe with independent non-partisan information on all aspects of the electoral process.
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