Mugabe re-elected Zimbabwe’s president for the 7th term

Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe was on Saturday  officially returned for  a seventh term in office, amid claims of electoral fraud.

Mr Mugabe, 89, won 61% of the vote, against Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s 34%.

Mr Tsvangirai earlier said the elections for parliament and president were fraudulent and promised to take legal action.

He said his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) would no longer work with Mr Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party.

  The two parties have been working together in a coalition since the last election in 2008 sparked widespread violence.

 Mr Mugabe has been president since Zimbabwe won independence from the UK in 1980.

The European Union, which maintains sanctions on Mr Mugabe and his senior aides, said it was concerned about “alleged irregularities and reports of incomplete participation” in the election.

 The largest group of domestic monitors, the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN), had said problems with voter registration had left up to one million people unable to cast their ballots, most of them in MDC strongholds.

 However, the African Union and SADC broadly endorsed the election, saying it was free and peaceful.

On Saturday , one of the nine members of the election commission resigned over the way the election was conducted.

 Commissioner Mkhululi Nyathi said in his resignation letter: “While throughout the whole process I retained some measure of hope that the integrity of the whole process could be salvaged along the way, this was not to be.”