MDC rejects electoral commission's explanation

The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) has denied rigging the 31 March legislative elections, but its attempt to explain discrepancies in vote tallies has been rejected by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). MDC spokesman Paul Themba Nyathi told IRIN on Friday that the party would press ahead with its petition to the Electoral Court regarding inconsistencies between vote tallies televised at the close of polling and the final count of votes received by candidates. According to results announced by the ZEC, the ruling ZANU-PF party took 78 of the 120 contested seats, the MDC garnered 41, and one seat was won by an independent candidate, former cabinet minister Jonathan Moyo. When the final vote tallies were announced there were increases or decreases of as much as 15,000 votes in about 30 constituencies. Addressing a media conference on Thursday, the ZEC chairman, retired Colonel George Chiweshe, said the commission believed the elections and poll count were conducted in a free and fair manner. He had called the press conference to respond to the MDC's ultimatum to explain the discrepancies, otherwise the party would take legal action. Chiweshe said the figures announced on television "were mere updates from various people on the ground, which we had not verified". Asked why the ZEC had earlier announced that 36,821 ballots had been cast at the close of polling in Beitbridge, which was later reduced to 20,602, Chiweshe said it was because they had not verified the information they had received from the ZEC officials on the ground. "We wanted to give an indication of the voting trends," he told journalists. However, the MDC was not appeased. "His attempt to explain the discrepancies was pathetic; nobody believed it because everyone knows what happened," Nyathi said. "We have to go to the Electoral Court and exhaust all legal means [of challenging the poll results]". The African Union observer team has already called on the ZEC to investigate the discrepancies.