President Robert Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe since the country’s independence in 1980, was re-elected to another five year term today.
Mugabe won 61% of the vote, versus his rival Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s 34%, BBC News reports. According to Reuters, Tsvangirai proclaimed the election “fraudulent” and declared he would challenge the results in court and in regional forums.
Perhaps one of the most shocking results of the election was that Matabeleland, a Zimbabwean region where thousands were killed when Mugabe sent a North Korean-trained army to the area more than 30 years ago, appeared to have voted for Mugabe’s Zanu PF party when they had a strong history of consistently voting for the opposing Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party, Zimbabwean author and laywer Petina Gappah wrote in The Telegraph.
The European Union (EU) mentioned a concern over “alleged irregularities and reports of incomplete participation, as well as the identified weaknesses in the electoral process and a lack of transparency,” but has not yet taken a definite stance on the election or its results.
Photo courtesy of Tech. Sgt. Jeremy Lock, US Air Force, Wikimedia Commons