80-year-old ‘Crocodile’ wins Zimbabwe’s presidential election

Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa won a second and final term in office, a result that was rejected by the opposition and questioned by observers.

Mnangagwa, who replaced longtime leader Robert Mugabe after a 2017 military coup, was expected to win re-election despite the country’s ongoing economic crisis, with analysts saying the competition was heavily skewed in favor of the ZANU-PF party that rules. country since independence and the end of white minority rule in the former Southern Rhodesia in 1980.

Emmerson Mnangagwa won 52.6 percent of the vote, compared to 44 percent for Nelson Chamisa, his archrival, according to official results announced by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) late Saturday night.

“Mnangagwa Emmerson Dambuzo of the ZANU-PF party has been declared the legitimately elected President of the Republic of Zimbabwe,” Electoral Committee Chairman Justice Chigumba told reporters.

The election, Al Jazeera notes, was marred by delays that sparked accusations from the opposition of fraud and voter suppression, but a small group of supporters of the ruling party celebrated the results of the vote on Saturday.

However, Promis Mwananzi, a spokesman for Chamisa’s Citizens’ Coalition for Change (CCC), said the opposition party did not sign the final vote count, which he called “false”.

“We cannot accept these results,” he told the AFP news agency, adding that the party would soon announce its next move.

The vote was watched across South Africa as a test of support for the Mnangagwa-led ZANU-PF party, whose 43-year rule has been undermined by disastrous economic management and accusations of authoritarianism, Al Jazeera said.

Foreign observers of the polls said on Friday that the election fell short of regional and international standards.

The head of the European Union monitoring mission on Friday said the vote was taking place in an “atmosphere of fear.” The SADC South African Regional Bloc mission noted problems such as vote delays, problems with the voter list, bans on opposition rallies and biased coverage by state media.

“The elections were fraught with irregularities and harmed the people of Zimbabwe,” said political analyst Regjoys Ngwenya. “Citizens Coalition for Change has good reason to go to court and challenge the result.”

ZANU-PF denies that it has an unfair advantage or seeks to influence the outcome of the elections through fraud.

Chigumba of the electoral commission reports that 80-year-old Emmerson Mnangagwa received more than 2.3 million votes, while Nelson Chamisa, 45, received more than 1.9 million.

With more than half of the votes cast, the president avoided a second round of elections. Voter turnout was 69 percent.

Nicole Beardsworth, a professor of politics at the University of the Witwatersrand, said she thought the announcement, made late Saturday night, was likely in response to criticism from SADC and other election observers.

Nicknamed “The Crocodile” and long considered Mugabe’s “enforcer”, Mnangagwa outmaneuvered an ailing Mugabe to take power amid massive protests.

This week, voting was pushed back to an unprecedented second day due to ballot printing delays in some key constituencies, including the opposition stronghold, the capital Harare.

Nelson Chamisa denounced the delays as “a clear case of voter suppression, a classic case of Stone Age fraud.”

As a white-ruled British colony called Rhodesia, the country seceded from London in 1965 with a unilateral declaration of independence. It finally gained independence in 1980 after a long guerrilla war and was renamed Zimbabwe.

But under Robert Mugabe, the independence fighter-turned-politician, the economy sank into crisis, and hyperinflation wiped out savings and stifled investment. Mnangagwa was a key member of Mugabe’s government, holding a number of positions including Minister of State Security, Minister of Justice and Vice President, Al Jazeera recalls.

The opposition hoped to ride the wave of dissatisfaction with continued corruption, high inflation, unemployment and entrenched poverty.

ZANU-PF was also declared the winner in the parliamentary race, taking 136 out of 210 seats that could be obtained under the “first after the elections” system, against 73 for the KTS. One seat was not allocated due to the death of a candidate.

An additional 60 seats are reserved for women appointed under the party-list proportional representation system.