Mnangagwa Wins Second Term as President of Zimbabwe

The Zimbabwean Electoral Commission announced that President Emmerson Mnangagwa won last week's presidential elections with 52.6 percent of the vote.

Mnangagwa, who took power from Robert Mugabe in a 2017 military coup, was widely expected to win a second term as analysts said the race was tilted in favor of the ruling party.

His main challenger, Nelson Chamisa of the opposition Citizens Alliance for Change, won 44 percent of the vote, according to the Electoral Commission.

A spokesman for the opposition coalition said in a post on the X website that the party rejects "any result that has been compiled in haste without being adequately verified".

Mnangagwa narrowly beat Chamisa in the last presidential elections in 2018. The opposition said at the time that the elections were marred by fraud, but the Constitutional Court upheld the result.

Mnangagwa's ZANU-PF has been in power for more than four decades.

The ruling party denies that it has any unfair advantage or that it seeks to influence the election results through fraud.

The head of the EU observer mission said on Friday that the elections took place in a "climate of fear". The Southern African Development Community (SADC) cited issues including voting delays, bans on rallies and biased media coverage of the government.