Zimbabwe’s President Mnangagwa was re-elected after a tense campaign

Zimbabwe’s incumbent President Emmerson Mnangagwa was declared the winner of the country’s presidential election on Saturday after securing an outright majority in a tense presidential campaign marred by delays. “The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission has announced the results of the 2023 presidential election. His Excellency President Emmerson Mnangagwa was declared the winner with 2,350,711 votes representing 52.6% of the vote, followed by Nelson Chamisa of the Citizens Coalition for Change party who scored 1,906,734 votes representing 44% of the vote.” Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Information tweeted on Saturday. The 80-year-old’s victory extends Zanu-PF’s decades-long stranglehold on politics in Zimbabwe, which has been the dominant party in the country since independence from Britain in 1980. Chamisa, 45, was optimistic about the victory and now has the announced by the electoral body results rejected. It is not immediately known if he will take legal action. His party had previously denounced the late delivery of voting materials, which had caused widespread voting delays, and also cited some alleged irregularities in the voting process. In a statement on Wednesday, the CCC said some candidates were omitted from the ballots, which in some cases, it added, were reprinted with the photos of the ruling party’s candidates on the CCC’s ballots. The Electoral Commission did not respond to these allegations. Voting continued for a second day in parts of Zimbabwe as elections got off to a late start on Wednesday. A presidential decree extended voting until Thursday in three provinces, including the capital Harare, where Chamisa’s party enjoys popular support. Observers praised the peaceful conduct of the elections but said the electoral process fell short of many regional and international standards. The European Union Election Observation Mission (EU EOM) said in a preliminary report released on Friday that “fundamental freedoms were increasingly curtailed during the elections,” adding that “acts of violence and intimidation” were also observed during the elections, which incited 40 election monitors were arrested by Zimbabwean police on Thursday for allegedly coordinating the publication of the results before the final ballot count. Human rights group Amnesty International said the arrests came “after the Zimbabwean NGO Forum released a report detailing the irregularities. This was the second election in Zimbabwe since the military ousted authoritarian leader Robert Mugabe in Year 2017. Mnangagwa, nicknamed The Crocodile, succeeded Mugabe after helping organize the coup that ousted him. He retained power the following year, defeating Chamisa in a hard-fought presidential election. In this 2018 election, Mnangagwa won 51% of the total vote while Chamisa received 44%. The results were contested by Chamisa, who called the election “fraudulent and illegal” and launched legal action. However, Mnangagwa was sworn in after Zimbabwe’s Constitutional Court upheld his victory. Easy to predict Analysts said the outcome of the last election was easier to predict. “I’m not sure it will be a landmark election,” said Eldred Masunungure, a policy and governance expert at the University of Zimbabwe. “I don’t see any signals or signs that this is a turning election,” he told CNN ahead of Wednesday’s election. Mnangagwa’s Zanu PF party also told CNN they expect a landslide victory. “We will beat up the opposition,” their national spokesman Chris Mutsvangwa said ahead of the election. “It will be a landslide against the opposition,” he added.