HARARE—Zimbabwe's main opposition party goes to court on Saturday to force the release of results from the presidential poll one week ago amid signs President Robert Mugabe plans to fight tenaciously to extend his 28-year rule.
Lawyers representing Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change will ask a high court in Harare for an order compelling election officials to issue the results immediately, ending a delay that has raised suspicions of a tainted vote.
The MDC claims Tsvangirai defeated Mugabe and should be declared president of the economically devastated African nation, but independent observers say the MDC leader did not win an outright majority and faces a run-off against Mugabe.
The court case will begin at 4 a.m. EDT, according to MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa.
"We want an urgent release of the results, within four hours of the court order," he said. "We're fighting the anxiety, disappointment, speculation and rumors as a result of this delay."
Senior officials with Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF party served notice on Friday that they would back the 84-year-old veteran in the second round of voting, ending speculation earlier in the week that they might ask him to step down.
The ZANU-PF also said it would challenge some of the results of the parliamentary election, which showed it lost control of the lower house. Preliminary results from the upper chamber show Mugabe's party with a slim plurality of the seats.
It is not clear when the run-off would occur. Zimbabwean law requires that it be held within three weeks, but the ZANU-PF hinted on Friday that the timing might be changed.
The hardening of the ruling party's position has punctured the guarded optimism that had emerged among Zimbabwe's opposition and Mugabe's critics in the West, who hoped the ex-liberation war fighter would concede defeat.
Former colonial ruler Britain and the United States, both of whom have applied sanctions on Mugabe and his top officials, have criticized the election delay and suggested it could be the precursor to a rigged result.
Mugabe's government is widely accused in the West of stealing previous presidential and parliamentary elections, and his removal is seen by Washington and London as necessary to rebuilding Zimbabwe's shattered economy.
Zimbabweans are struggling with inflation of more than 100,000 percent—the highest in the world—mass unemployment and chronic shortages of meat, bread, fuel and other basic necessities.
Worries that tensions could explode rose on Friday when liberation war veterans, a pro-Mugabe group that has in the past intimidated government opponents and violently occupied white-owned farms, attacked the MDC for claiming victory.
"These are all provocations against us freedom fighters," veterans' leader Jabulani Sibanda told a news conference.
He added that the veterans would repel any attempt by white farmers to reclaim properties seized by Mugabe. "It now looks like these elections were a way to open for the re-invasion of this country (by the British)," he said.
The farm seizures, which were part of a policy by Mugabe's government to redistribute land to poor blacks, are often blamed for the devastation of Zimbabwe's agricultural sector.
Once a net exporter of food, the country has seen production fall sharply since the seizures began in 2000 and now relies on food imports and handouts to feed its people.
Feeds