President Edgar Lungu took the lead over his main rival on Saturday in early counting from Zambia’s presidential election, but the main opposition said some electoral officials were colluding in favour of his party.
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Lungu led with 669,960 votes against Hichilema’s 644,132 after 69 of the country’s 156 constituencies in Thursday’s vote had been collated, the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) told reporters on Sunday.
Lungu has been in office for just 19 months after taking power previous year when he beat Hichilema by less than 28,000 votes in a snap election following the death in office of president Michael Sata.
Lungu is slightly ahead on 699,960 votes with Hichilema close behind on 644,132.
Hakainde Hichilena and his UPND party have rejected the election results, claiming that the elections were rigged.
Lungu took power only a year ago when he beat Hichilema by less than 28,000 votes in a snap election following the death in office of president Michael Sata.
“We have confidence that the constitutional court will rise above board and declare the results a nullity”, he said.
But the declaration by Zambia’s electoral commission announcing Edgar Lungu as president-elect wasn’t welcomed by all.
“We know that the PF, once they realised that they were behind, they wanted to force a re-run”. They can not win the presidency and we have done our PVT (Parallel Vote Tabulation). Hichilema accused the commission Friday of conspiring with the PF to influence the election, a charge the commission denied. The other seven presidential candidates are far behind.
According to Voice of America, Mr. Mwiimbu said that the UPND had “documentary proof” of some Zambians celebrating after the chairman of the Zambia Electoral Commission, Justice Essau Chulu, announced that the Dubai company had won the bidding to print the ballot papers.
The only female presidential contender, who came third with 24,149 votes, said her party witnessed a lot of anomalies in the results for the presidential election, adding that the electoral body failed to help the situation by being adamant and failing to address the concerns raised.
Following Sata’s death in October 2014, Lungu was adopted as the candidate of Sata’s party, the Patriotic Front, for the January 2015 presidential by-election.
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Thursday’s elections saw Zambians choosing members of parliament, local councilors and mayors, as well as voting in a constitutional referendum to amend the nation’s bill of rights.
