HARARE, April 6: Zimbabwe’s ruling party refused to release its grip on power on Sunday, demanding a presidential election recount as Robert Mugabe’s feared war veterans tried to seize several white-owned farms.

As Zimbabweans began a second week of waiting for results of the poll, state media said Mugabe’s ZANU-PF had dismissed a unity government as unworkable and was now demanding a complete recount after detecting irregularities.

The opposition Movement for Democratic Change, whose leader Morgan Tsvangirai, 56, has claimed a clear victory over 84-year-old Mugabe, sought to break the deadlock with a legal bid to force officials to declare a winner. The outcome of the high court petition was due to be announced on Monday.

Meanwhile the war veterans, hardline Mugabe supporters who led the sometimes violent farm invasions at the start of the decade, tried to move onto several of the few remaining white-owned farms but most were later repelled by police.

The first wave of such invasions are widely seen as having heralded the start of the economic collapse of Zimbabwe. Inflation now stands at over 100,000 per cent, the jobless level is beyond 80 per cent and the most basic foods are in scarce supply.

Tsvangirai, looking to become only the country’s second post-independence leader, upped the stakes on Saturday by declaring he had won enough votes to avoid a second round run-off against Mugabe.

ZANU-PF hit straight back by demanding the electoral commission stage a complete recount of the vote. The state-run Sunday Mail reported it had written to the commission highlighting anomalies in a number of constituencies.

“ZANU-PF has requested the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission to recount and audit all its electoral material relating to last week’s presidential election following revelations of errors and miscalculations in the compilation of the poll result,” said the government mouthpiece.

“Consequent to the anomalies, the party has also requested that the commission defer the announcement of the presidential election result.” The demand was swiftly branded “illegal” by the opposition, which claimed the ruling party had been stuffing ballot boxes with false voting slips since election day.

“They know a recount will produce a fictitious and fallacious result in favour of Mugabe,” said chief MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa.

Amid the war of words, one of Mugabe’s lieutenants revealed that the MDC had made an approach about a unity government, which had been swiftly rejected.

“We can never collaborate with the MDC given that our political objectives and aspirations are as different as day is from night,” said Patrick Chinamasa.

Mugabe, in power since independence from Britain 28 years ago, suffered the heaviest blow of his rule in last weekend’s joint presidential and parliamentary elections.

ZANU-PF lost control of parliament to the MDC while the party has conceded Mugabe failed to surpass the 50 percent threshold needed to avoid a run-off.

At a meeting of its politburo Friday, the party endorsed Mugabe to stand in a run-off, which should take place on April 19.

However the lengthy delay over the results and the latest call for a recount is likely to upset the timeframe.

In a bid to break the impasse, the MDC argued before the high court that the results were effectively already known as returns were posted outside the 9,000 voting centres soon after polling closed.

The electoral commission’s lawyer however argued the case was beyond the court’s remit.

“Judgement is reserved until tomorrow at 10:00 am (0800 GMT),” Justice Tendai Uchena announced at the end of the afternoon hearing.—AFP