Zimbabwe Domestic Monitoring Returns – Get ‘Em While They’re Hot

Posted on March 31st, 2008 Danielle Pearl 3 comments  Print This Post

For those waiting with baited breath for the results of Saturday’s presidential vote in Zimbabwe -

Keep waiting. In the meantime, the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) released a press statement this afternoon with the results of its Sample Based Observation – essentially a parallel vote tabulation by a more regime-acceptable name – based on officially posted results from a random sample of polling stations, weighted to account for the country’s urban/rural divide. ZESN is a group of 38 domestic civil society organizations in Zimbabwe, which has monitored elections and conducted democracy-building activites in the country since 2000.

The SBO results show opposition candidate Morgan Tsvangirai of the MDC in the lead with 49.4% of the vote, coming out ahead of 28-year ruler Robert Mugabe with 41.8%. Simba Makoni, a recent challenger within Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party, comes in a distant third with 8.2%.

ZESN’s numbers indicate that a fair and accurate official vote count will lead to a run-off between Mr. Tsvangirai and Mr. Mugabe, as neither appears to have managed to capture greater than 50% of the vote. Whether or not the official election results (still unreleased by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission at the time of this posting) will reflect the monitors’  findings remains to be seen.

ZESN’s statement should be available online soon at www.zesn.org.zw. It does not reference results for the simultaneously-held local or parliamentary elections.