HARARE - VETERAN Zimbabwe leader Robert Mugabe was inaugurated for a fresh five-year term yesterday after being declared the landslide winner of a widely condemned presidential run-off in which he was the only candidate.
The inauguration extends Mr Mugabe's unbroken 28-year rule of the former British colony.
Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai withdrew from the run-off a week ago, saying a systematic campaign of violence, which killed nearly 90 of his followers, made a free and fair vote impossible. The ballot was held in defiance of world opinion.
Mr Tsvangirai had won the most votes in the first round of presidential voting in March, but not enough for an outright victory.
Mr Mugabe won in all of the country's 10 provinces, gaining 2.15million votes against 233,000 cast for Mr Tsvangirai, whose name was on the ballot papers because electoral officials said his withdrawal came too late. Turnout was put at about 42per cent.
The commission released the result of Friday's vote in less than 48 hours, compared to five weeks for the March polls.
Moments after the result was announced on state TV, a marching band opened the inauguration ceremony for Mr Mugabe, 84, at his official residence.
Mr Mugabe, in power since independence from Britain in 1980, invited Mr Tsvangirai to the ceremony. But the latter rejected the invitation.
Dismissing the inauguration as meaningless, Mr Tsvangirai said he would ask African Union (AU) leaders meeting in Egypt today not to recognise the re-election. Mr Mugabe is expected to attend the AU meeting.
Mugabe spokesman George Charamba said the invitation to Mr Tsvangirai had been issued 'in the spirit of the President's wish to reach out...It is a major step towards political engagement'.
But Mr Tsvangirai told Reuters: 'I cannot give support to an exercise I am totally opposed to...the whole world has condemned it, the Zimbabwean people will not give this exercise legitimacy and support.'
Mr Mugabe is under pressure from within Africa to enter talks with Mr Tsvangirai over the country's political and economic crisis. He went ahead with the vote despite widespread international dismissal of the election as a sham.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told CNN yesterday that African countries were no longer willing to support Mr Mugabe: 'What has fundamentally changed is that many African leaders are no longer willing to accept a regime that is intimidating and threatening its own people and the opposition.'
Mr Tsvangirai told Reuters the opposition was committed to AU-sponsored talks with Mr Mugabe's government, although no negotiations had started.
Pan-African Parliament observers, one of the few groups able to monitor Friday's ballot, said the vote was so flawed it should be re-run.
