Zimbabwe main opposition party retains key seat

HARARE (Reuters) – Zimbabwe’s main opposition party
retained its parliamentary seat in a key by-election President
Robert Mugabe’s ruling party had hoped would show it regaining
lost ground in urban centres.

State radio reported on Sunday that the main faction of the
divided opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) polled
7,949 votes on Saturday against 3,961 for Mugabe’s ruling
ZANU-PF party while a smaller MDC camp only managed 504.

Mugabe had vowed at a rally in the Budiriro district on
Thursday to defeat the MDC, which accuses his government of
landing the country into a deepening economic crisis through 26
years of post-independence mismanagement.

Inflation has rocketed to over 1,000 percent, the highest
rate in the world, and Zimbabweans also have to contend with
high unemployment, persistent shortages of food, fuel and other
key commodities and frequent water and electricity cuts.

Formed in 1999, the MDC came close to unseating Mugabe’s
ZANU-PF in 2000 parliamentary elections on a wave of public
anger over the crisis, but the ruling party has won major polls
since then amid charges of rigging from the opposition backed
by several Western countries.

Mugabe denies the rigging charges and dismisses the
opposition as a puppet of former colonial ruler Britain and
other Western states angered by his controversial seizure of
white-owned commercial farms for blacks.

Zimbabwe’s security forces have intensified a crackdown on
Mugabe’s critics in recent weeks, fearing protests threatened
by the MDC and its ally the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions.

On Saturday the ZCTU said it would lead a national strike
at an unspecified date this later year for higher wages as
inflation ravages disposable incomes for most Zimbabwe workers.

Last week the police barred street marches planned to mark
last year’s official destruction of urban slums, fearing the
anniversary could provide another flashpoint for violence.

But about 500 people marched peacefully on Saturday in
Zimbabwe’s second city of Bulawayo after winning a court ruling
permitting the march, church leaders said.

On Friday police detained senior opposition politicians
from the renegade MDC faction during a road campaign in
Budiriro, and deported South Africa’s most powerful union boss
as he headed to Harare for a ZCTU conference.