With a runoff likely in Zimbabwe, violence is feared
President Robert Mugabe, who has held power in the destitute country for 28 years, is expected to fight to the finish.
HARARE, ZIMBABWE — President Robert Mugabe's party has lost its majority in parliament after 28 years in power, election officials announced Wednesday, as the aging Zimbabwean leader faced a more damaging blow: the virtual certainty of a runoff in the presidential race that he has scant hope of winning.
With fewer allies left and few prizes to offer in the economically ravaged county, Mugabe faces a final do-or-die struggle to hold on to power in a second round of voting that many people here fear could turn bloody.
Word of the historic moment came in the deadpan tones of Zimbabwean electoral officials reading out voting figures on television. They said that opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai's party had won at least 105 seats in the 210-seat parliament, Mugabe's faction got 93 seats and smaller parties held the rest.
The triumph of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change was slightly dampened by party officials' embarrassing math mistake. They declared Tsvangirai the winner of the presidential race with 50.3% of the vote, enough to avoid a runoff. But the party's own figures showed he fell just short of the 50%-plus-one threshold for outright victory.
Tsvangirai, a former union official who has faced treason charges and beatings in a nine-year battle to unseat Mugabe, seems almost certain to win a second-round election.
One of Tsvangirai's main challenges is to win the support of military and security commanders tied to Mugabe's camp, many of whom are suspicious of the longtime opposition leader and fear that he will take away benefits they have reaped during nearly three decades of Mugabe's rule.
Mugabe, who at 84 managed to address three campaign rallies a day during the campaign, has not been seen in public since Saturday's vote. To some in the ruling party, the big mistake was letting him run at all: Many had wanted him to step aside but failed to unite last year around a possible successor.
Zimbabwe's shattered economy, with a mind-boggling annual inflation rate of 100,000% or more, has left its people in severe hardship. Millions have fled; many others, in a country with a crippled health system and life expectancy among the world's worst, have died.
The country, once a regional powerhouse and food exporter, relies on international food aid.
Mugabe's accusations that Tsvangirai and international sanctions (aimed mainly at the elite) were to blame for the disaster did not wash with voters.
