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Daniel Nemukuyu, Harare Bureau
THE Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN), the largest local observer group in the just just-ended harmonised poll, has released its own election results that tally with those announced by the country’s official electoral body, further disproving rigging claims by MDC Alliance leader Mr Nelson Chamisa.

ZESN, a non-partisan coalition of 36 non-governmental organisations formed in 2000 to coordinate activities pertaining to elections, endorsed the results announced by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) which declared President Mnangagwa the winner in the Presidential poll.

According to ZESN’s estimate results, President Mnangagwa won the election with 50,7 percent while Mr Chamisa got 45,8 percent.

The results fall within the same range with those announced by ZEC that saw President Mnangagwa declared winner with 50,8 percent of the total vote.

ZEC declared Mr Chamisa second in the race, with 44,3 percent. ZESN, using its sample based observation (SBO) results, endorsed the ZEC results.

“ZEC’s announced official results are consistent with the SBO projections. The percentage vote for each candidate as officially announced by the ZEC falls within the SBO estimated ranges,” reads the report.

The ZESN results were released at the same time Mr Chamisa was addressing journalists in a bid to discredit the results. Addressing a press conference at Bronte Hotel in Harare yesterday, Mr Chamisa claimed to be the winner, accusing ZEC and Zanu-PF of conniving to manipulate the election results.

He told the press conference that he won the election with over 2,3 million votes.

But Mr Chamisa did not back his claims with evidence, which he claimed to possess.

“Our collated results show that we won the election with over 2,3 million votes, which translates to 56 percent. It is actually Mnangagwa who lost the election with about 44 percent,” said Chamisa.

“More than 20 000 votes were fraudulently added to Zanu-PF’s Mnangagwa. They inflated and romanced the results beyond what is expected in terms of the voters’ roll. Some V11 forms have been altered to manipulate the results,” alleged Mr Chamisa.

He said the declaration by ZEC must be nullified.

“The declaration of Mnangagwa having won the election is such a regrettable decision. I must say that Mnangagwa did not win the election. The election was won by the MDC Alliance candidate.

“We have our tallies which we will give to anyone who wants them. We tried to talk to ZEC about it but they were not even prepared to listen to us,” he said.

“No verification of figures was done. It was done nicodemously by ZEC in cahoots with Zanu-PF. The result was announced in the dead of the night,” said Mr Chamisa. He said he was going to contest the outcome.

“As far as we are concerned, this election is fraudulent, illegal, illegitimate and characterised by serious credibility gaps.

“We will not honour something that is null and void like a declaration by Chigumba.

“We are going to be challenging a number of election results. We actually got a majority had it not been for the manipulation of the results,” he said.

Mr Chamisa is on record before elections were held vowing not to accept any results that did not declare him winner and threatened to make the country ungovernable.