Mnangagwa declared winner of Zimbabwe’s presidential election

The Electoral Commission of Zimbabwe has declared ZANU-PF candidate Emmerson Mnangagwa as the winner of the presidential polls.

According to result of the polls released by electoral officials, Mnangagwa, won 50.8 percent of the votes cast, with his closest rival Nelson Chamisa, of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) Alliance, garnering 44.3 percent.

Moments after he was declared the winner of the presidential elections marred by violence and rigging allegations, Mnangagwa took to Twitter to thank Zimbabweans and hailed “a new beginning”.

Paul Mangwana, spokesperson for ZANU-PF, said the ruling party was “very happy with the results”.

“We’re very pleased that our president has won because it means that we can now deliver the change that’s promised to the people,” he told Al Jazeera.

He added that if the opposition had “the courage to claim fraud, then they must have the courage to face us in court – we are ready for the battle and we will defeat [them] the same way we defeated them at the polls.”

However, the chairperson of MDC Allaince, Morgan Komichi, described the election results as “bogus”.

“We were not given time to verify the results. This result that you are hearing has not been verified. These are bogus figures. They are bogus results, and we believe that a lot of the figures have been inflated,” he said, speaking outside the National Results Centre.