Johannesburg/Harare - Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) was alarmed Monday as results trickling in from Saturday's elections showed President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party and the MDC almost neck to neck. The country held combined presidential, parliamentary and local elections on Saturday.
With 25 of 210 seats of the parliamentary assembly counted, MDC, led by Morgan Tsvangirai, had taken 13 seats to Zanu-PF's 12, the state-controlled Zimbabwe Election Commission announced.
The close race suggested by the official results contrasted with the MDC's own unofficial vote count, which showed the party taking 96 out of 128 constituencies so far.
"I would not be surprised if there was not nocturnal activity taking place and suddenly there are subtractions and additions," MDC Secretary General Tendai Biti told a press conference in Harare.
The results of the vote, in which authoritarian ruler Mugabe,84, faces an unprecedented challenge to his 28-year hold on power, were being issued at a snail's pace fuelling speculation in MDC ranks of attempts to "cook" the result in Mugabe's favour.
The MDC agreed, however, agreed with ZEC on the distribution of the first six seats, in which Zanu-PF and the MDC took three each.
Biti criticized an observer team from the 14-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC) which gave the elections a qualified thumbs-up, describing them as "peaceful" and "credible" before the count was over. The observers expressed concern over a number of irregularities, including the presence of police in polling stations.
The effect of the SADC report had been "to sanitize what is not a free and fair election," Biti said.
Fearing vote rigging the MDC rushed to unilaterally claim victory shortly after the close of the polls in the early hours of Sunday based on unofficial and partial results.
"We have won this election," Biti declared. The secretary general has been leading the party's response to the polls after Tsvangirai apparently went into hiding.
The delay in the release of the results has caused widespread consternation.
"It's too slow. We are very concerned with the speed," Noel Kututwa of the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) told dpa.
"There's not doubt there's some kind of effort underway to modify the result," Eddie Cross, an MDC MP who retained his seat in the city of Bulawayo, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
Unconfirmed results posted on polling station doors had shown the MDC and Tsvangirai sweeping Harare and showing strongly in some rural areas previously considered ruling party strongholds. The party also polled well in the second largest city Bulawayo.
Ex-Finance Minister Simba Makoni, whose surprise decision to stand against his former party leader Mugabe, appeared to be running a distant third.
In remarks carried in the state-owned paper Sunday Mail, government spokesman George Charamba called the MDC's unilateral victory claim tantamount to a coup d'etat.
"We all know how coups are handled," he added.
The streets of Harare and Bulawayo remained calm on Monday. Riot police were seen on the streets of Harare and a
