HARARE, Zimbabwe — Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai won 47.9 percent of the vote in Zimbabwe’s presidential elections, officials said yesterday — more than longtime President Robert Mugabe but not enough to avoid a runoff in the bitterly contested vote.
Mr. Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change rejected the results and proposed forming a national unity government to include Mr. Mugabe’s ruling ZANU-PF party, but not the 84-year-old president.
But Mr. Mugabe accepts the outcome and will run in the second round of balloting, said Emmerson Mnangagwa, a top ZANU-PF official.
The United States and other Western nations have criticized the long delay in releasing the results of the March 29 vote, and have accused Mr. Mugabe of intimidating the opposition in a bid to hold onto power.
“It’s really impossible as a practical matter right now to think about how Zimbabwe could hold a runoff election when … the leading vote-getter is having his party and supporters regularly harassed and subject to abuse by government officials,” State Department spokesman Tom Casey said yesterday.
The Electoral Commission yesterday announced that Mr. Mugabe won 43.2 percent of the votes and that another round of voting was required. A former Mugabe ally came in a distant third in the election.
“No candidate has received a majority of votes counted. A second election will be held at a date to be announced,” the commission said.
The opposition party’s secretary-general, Tendai Biti, said he believed any runoff would be illegal and risked allowing Mr. Mugabe to hold on to power.
Mr. Mugabe has ruled since Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980, keeping his stranglehold on power in recent years through elections that independent observers say have been marred by fraud, intimidation and rigging.
The only way to resolve the impasse is with a “government of national healing,” Mr. Biti said at a news conference in neighboring South Africa. Most of the party’s leadership, including Mr. Tsvangirai, has left Zimbabwe in recent weeks, accusing Mr. Mugabe of orchestrating a campaign of violence and intimidation.
“Morgan Tsvangirai should be allowed to form a government of national healing that includes all Zimbabwean stakeholders,” Mr. Biti said. “The only condition we give … is that President Mugabe must immediately concede.”
Mr. Biti would not categorically rule out a runoff, but said there could not be one “for the simple and good reasons that the country is burning” amid violence and an economic collapse.
Independent observers have said that Mr. Tsvangirai won the most votes, but not the 50 percent plus one vote needed to avoid a runoff.
The main campaign issue for many here has been the economic collapse of what had once been a regional breadbasket.
• Staff writer David R. Sands contributed to this report.
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