Opposition leader Michael Sata took an early lead yesterday in Zambia’s presidential race, with ballots from 12 percent of the nation’s constituencies counted, election officials said.
Sata of the Patriotic Front had won 60 percent of the votes counted, with 19 of Zambia’s 150 constituencies reporting, election officials said.
Sata had 187,863 votes versus 96,325 votes for Acting President Rupiah Banda, officials said.
PHOTO: AP
Banda, of the ruling Movement for Multiparty Democracy took nearly 31 percent of the vote, with two candidates from smaller parties dividing the rest.
Zambians voted on Thursday to choose a successor to former president Levy Mwanawasa, who died in office in August following a stroke.
Sata has accused police and election officials of plotting to rig the vote, and has already announced that he will not accept a defeat in the election.
Police and armed forces are on alert for possible violence, after Sata’s supporters rioted for days following his 2006 loss to Mwanawasa.
Leon Myburgh, an analyst who covers sub-Saharan Africa for Citigroup in Johannesburg, said it was no surprise that Sata was leading in early results.
“It is to be expected. Sata’s support is in the urban areas and results in those areas are usually counted first. This is what happened in 2006, then he was also ahead early,” Myburgh said.
Sata, who portrays himself as a champion of the poor, said during the campaign that if elected he would move to get foreign companies to sell equity stakes to Zambians.
The country’s largest independent election monitoring group said yesterday the election had been generally peaceful but there were some instances of voting irregularities.
The winner faces the formidable task of matching Mwanawasa’s strong record of fiscal discipline, praised by Western donors, and cracking down on corruption, two rare successes in Africa.
Banda, a prominent businessman with wide government experience, has campaigned as a steady hand who can keep Mwanawasa’s business-friendly policies going in the world’s 10th largest copper producer.
The vote is seen as a test of Zambia’s commitment to multi-party democracy, restored in 1990 after 18 years of one-party rule under Kenneth Kaunda, but neither Banda nor Sata is expected to reshape the political landscape dramatically.
The only published opinion poll, released by the African market information group Steadman, showed Sata with 46 percent support, well ahead of Banda with 32 percent.
Banda is hoping to benefit from Zambia’s relative prosperity as well as Mwanawasa’s enduring popularity. The economy has grown at an average of 5 percent per year since 2002, boosted by the sharp rise in world commodity prices.
But 65 percent of Zambia’s 12 million people live on less than US$1 a day and more than 1 million are HIV positive. Inflation has fallen from more than 200 percent in 1991 to about 14 percent.
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