Mugabe claims 'sweeping victory' of Zimbawe election

June 29, 2008 Robert Mugabe, the Zimbabwean president who has recently been widely criticized by world leaders, has claimed the current results show that he will have a 'sweeping victory' in the unopposed presidential run-off elections.

Mugabe announced his victory on one of the state run television networks. "The returns show that we are winning convincingly, that we have won in all the 26 constituencies in Harare, an MDC stronghold where we won in only one constituency in March," he said.

Robert Mugabe was recently under a large amount of pressure to postpone the election after the main opposition candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, pulled out due to fears of violence. For example, Ban Ki-moon, secretary general of the United Nations yesterday called for the election to be postponed. He said that he "strongly supports the statement of the Chairman of SADC (Southern African Development Community) that conditions do not exist for a run-off election to be held at this time and that they should be postponed."