RESIDENTS view election results pasted at a polling station in Highfield suburb

HARARE – Zimbabwe’s ruling ZANU PF party has amassed 63 seats against the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party’s 62 seats according to the latest results of a parliamentary election that looks firmly headed for a close finish.

The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) has now declared results from 130 constituencies, nearly two thirds of the 210-seat House of Assembly.

There are 80 more seats to be declared, many of them in ZANU PF’s traditional rural support base but analysts and some ruling party insiders are convinced it can realistically hope to beat the Morgan Tsvangirai-led MDC only by just a few seats.

A smaller faction of the MDC led by academic Arthur Mutambara has so far grabbed five seats in rural areas.

The opposition faction, whose secretary general Welshman Ncube surprisingly lost in Bulawayo, is expected to pick up a few more seats further ensuring whoever wins between the two main political parties will only have a few seats majority.

The Tsvangirai-led MDC says figures collated by its own people shows it winning against ZANU PF and the opposition party has accused the ZEC of delaying the issuing of the results in a desperate attempt to fix the vote in favour of Mugabe’s government.

The ZEC, which only began releasing results more than 30 hours after voting ended on Saturday, has not yet released any results for the presidential election in which Mugabe faces his toughest challenge against Tsvangirai and former finance Simba Makoni.

Projections by the independent Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) show, Tsvangirai taking 49.4 percent of the presidential vote against Mugabe’s 41.8 percent with Makoni winning 8.2 percent. Such a result would mean a second run-off between Tsvangirai and Mugabe to determine eventual winner.

Tsvangirai and Makoni’s camps have indicated they would close ranks behind one candidate in the event of a run-off.

The elections, billed Zimbabwe’s most important since independence from Britain 28 years ago, have been held amid an acute recession blamed on state mismanagement and seen in the world’s highest inflation of more than 100 000 percent, spiraling poverty, shortages of food and every basic commodity.

Political analysts say support from the military and a skewed political playing field that disadvantages the opposition are enough to ensure victory for Mugabe’s government despite an economic crisis that the World Bank has described as the worst in the world outside a war zone. ZimOnline.