HARARE - The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) on Tuesday released a few results favouring Zanu-PF and then went silent amid mounting pressure from the opposition MDC Alliance to announce the full results that it said would show its leader 40-year-old Nelson Chamisa had won the election.
Tendai Biti, the former Finance minister in the Government of National Unity, who has won the ticket to represent the MDC Alliance in Parliament said Zec should announce the results immediately because they were aware that it had all the data by late Monday.
He said data from V11 forms - lists of results compiled by polling agents and signed in certification by party agents which in some instances were posted outside voting stations after the polls closed - enabled the MDC Alliance to work out that it had won the historic election.
Earlier Zec Chairperson Priscilla Chigumba said had warned that only the commission was constitutionally mandated with the role of announcing results.
Zimbabwe has a three-tier election system; local authority, parliamentary and presidential.
There are also three methods of announcing the results, with all polling stations expected to post the results of voting in their respective areas immediately after counting. Therefore, local authority and parliamentary candidates are well positioned to know if they have romped to victory just 24-hours after the polls.
Addressing a media briefing, Chigumba said seven constituencies had so far submitted their reports on voting patterns in their respective areas.
Of the seven, Zanu PF took six while MDC Alliance took one seat. The national assembly has 210 seats, so there is still a long way to go before all the results are out.
By late Tuesday members of the MDC Alliance had begun gathering at Harvest House - the party headquarters in the capital Harare - for what they said were "victory celebrations".
The incumbent president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, has stopped short of declaring victory but has said he has received ''extremely positive" information regarding the results.