Mugabe Declared Victor in Zimbabwe

President Robert Mugabe, a former Marxist freedom fighter who led Zimbabwe to independence, was declared the winner Wednesday of a bitterly contested election that critics said was marred by massive flaws, intimidation and violence.

Official results gave the 78-year-old Mugabe 1.7 million votes--about 56% of the ballots cast and well over the 50% needed to guarantee him another six-year term in office. Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who had posed the first real challenge to Mugabe’s 22-year rule, came up short with 1.3 million votes.

Tsvangirai said his party, the Movement for Democratic Change, would not accept the result and might take legal action to contest it.

The emerging consensus among Western nations and independent local observers is that the election was a sham because administrative errors, voter harassment and a host of other government-endorsed political shenanigans prevented thousands of Zimbabweans--primarily in Harare, the capital and the opposition’s stronghold--from voting.

In Washington, President Bush repudiated the results.

“We do not recognize the outcome of the election because we think it’s flawed,” he said. “And we are dealing with our friends to figure out how to deal with this flawed election.”

U.S. officials said they will probably punish the Mugabe government by freezing assets held by him and his associates in the United States. A senior State Department official said the asset freeze is expected to be announced in the next few days.

Analysts warned that Mugabe’s controversial victory, viewed in the West as a blow to democracy, could jeopardize potential foreign investment in southern Africa and further undermine prospects for economic growth and stability.

Senior officials of the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front said the poll results underscored the faith Zimbabweans have in Mugabe to continue leading them.

“What it shows is that the people of Zimbabwe are like any other peoples of the world,” said George Charamba, the country’s secretary of state for information and publicity. “They are rational voters. They vote for their interests. They vote for their sovereignty. They vote for real, genuine freedom.”

But Tsvangirai, a former trade union leader, called the election “daylight robbery” and denounced it as “the biggest fraud I have ever witnessed in my life.”

Voting was originally scheduled for Saturday and Sunday but was extended into Monday after thousands were left waiting Sunday night outside polling stations in the capital. On Monday night, a judge rejected an opposition appeal to extend voting to a fourth day.

Tsvangirai noted that hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans had not been able to vote because of a reduction in the number of polling stations in MDC strongholds and the removal of people from voting registers. He also charged that the opposition was prevented from deploying its own polling agents in more than half of all rural polling stations.

“This was done through state-sponsored terrorism conducted by ZANU-PF militia, rogue elements in [independence] war veterans, ZANU-PF youths and, in some instances, with the active or passive connivance of the police,” Tsvangirai said.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw denounced the conduct of the election, saying Mugabe’s government led a campaign of “violence and intimidation designed to achieve one outcome: power at all costs.” Britain is Zimbabwe’s former colonial ruler.

The 14-nation Southern African Development Community’s Parliamentary Forum said, “The election process could not be said to adequately comply with the norms and standards for elections in the SADC region,” to which Zimbabwe is party.

But government officials denied that there were any irregularities.

Information Minister Jonathan Moyo said Zimbabwe should be praised for conducting such an exemplary election, and he dismissed Western critics as imperialists trying to impose their will on Africans.

“You are a good boy if you repeat their rubbish,” Moyo said. “Try to stand up for what you truly believe in, and you will see what the white world does.”

South African observers in Zimbabwe endorsed Mugabe’s victory, declaring his reelection legitimate because the opposition had participated in the electoral process. Mission leader Samuel Motsuenyane told reporters that it was simply “unfortunate that some registered voters were turned away because of administrative oversight.”

Analysts warned that South Africa’s strategy of so-called quiet diplomacy in dealing with Zimbabwe could endanger investment prospects and derail Western backing for a new South African-led initiative designed to promote growth, democracy and peace on the continent.

Hailed at independence from Britain in 1980 as a true model of an African democrat, Mugabe is now widely seen as a dictator who drove this once-rich nation of 13 million people from prosperity to poverty.

He has blamed the country’s economic woes, including unemployment and soaring inflation, on an alleged British-led conspiracy to ruin Zimbabwe.

Campaigning under the slogan “Land Is the Economy and the Economy Is Land,” the president has vowed to continue his controversial program that seeks to wrest property from Zimbabwe’s white minority for the resettlement of landless blacks.

Government officials insisted that the land issue spurred Mugabe’s victory. “We understand that the economy cannot be turned around without resolving the core issue, which is land,” Moyo said.

A highly educated and articulate former teacher, Mugabe has also been praised for promoting black empowerment.

“At least I know that black people can have dignity, self-respect and pride in this country, something we don’t have when we travel outside,” said Blessmore Totarisa, 31, a sound director and producer in the music industry who voted for Mugabe.

Mugabe has accused Tsvangirai of being a puppet of Zimbabwe’s white minority and of Britain. Supporters view the MDC leader as the only immediate hope to reverse the country’s economic slide and reinstate law and order.

Despite killings and police harassment, the MDC stunned the ruling party in March 2000 by winning almost half the seats at stake in parliamentary elections.

But observers said the 50-year-old opposition leader botched his chances by failing to maintain the momentum of that victory.

“The MDC failed to get its people out,” said one Harare-based Western official. “Even if they kept the polling stations open in Harare for six days, Mugabe would still be the winner.”

Many businesses in Harare were closed Wednesday in anticipation of unrest. But the streets in the capital remained calm for most of the day except for sporadic celebration marches and convoys of ZANU-PF supporters.

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Times staff writer Paul Richter in Washington contributed to this report.