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Zimbabwe's opposition claims win on early results

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Officials at the 9,000 polling stations said that turnout for Saturday's elections appeared to be fairly low. Robert Mugabe has been in power in Zimbabwe since 1980, when the country won independence from colonial Britain. Once prosperous, Zimbabwe's economy has collapsed. It now has the world's highest inflation rate, chronic shortages of food and fuels, and countless sufferers of HIV/AIDS. The main opposition, Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), headed by former trade unionist Morgan Tsvangirai, has accused 84-year-old Mugabe of employing election-rigging tactics in an attempt to stay in power, and African observers say they detected fraud in yesterday's ballot. Mugabe, who is seeking a sixth term in office, said he could not sleep at night if he attempted to fix the result: "We are not in the habit of cheating. We don't rig elections... I cannot sleep with my conscience if I have rigged," Mugabe said as he cast his vote in the capital Harare.

Observers from the Pan-African parliament said in a letter to the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission they had found more than 8,000 non-existent voters registered on empty land in a Harare constituency - see above video for Al Jazeera report. The powerful heads of the security forces have backed Mugabe, and voters said they had seen patrolling police and army units with armoured vehicles and water cannons. The commission said it would start to announce official results later on today. Final results are not expected for several days from the presidential, parliamentary and local polls.
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