Zimbabwe election: Mugabe wins majority in parliament

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s party has won a two-thirds majority in parliament in this week’s elections, officials say.

The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission said that Zanu-PF had won 142 seats in the 210-seat chamber.

Analysts say the result is enough for Zanu-PF to change the constitution. Results in the presidential race have yet to be announced.

Earlier, the two main observer groups said voting had been free and peaceful.

African Union mission head Olusegun Obasanjo dismissed complaints of fraud, while another observer urged all parties to “accept the hard facts”.

Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, who is challenging Mr Mugabe in the presidential race, has described the election as a “huge farce”.

A local monitoring group has also said that the poll was “seriously compromised”.

Zanu-PF and Mr Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) have formed an uneasy coalition government since 2009.

That deal ended deadly violence that erupted after a disputed presidential poll the previous year.

Before the latest results were announced, Zanu-PF spokesman Rugaro Gumbo predicted that Mr Mugabe, 89, – who is running for a seventh term – would get at least 70% of the vote in the presidential poll.

“We are expecting a landslide victory,” he was quoted as saying in Zimbabwe’s state-run Herald newspaper

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