The Citizens’ Coalition for Change, Zimbabwe’s leading opposition party, has won 19 out of the 28 national assembly seats in the long-delayed parliamentary by-elections.
State-owned ZBC-TV reported Sunday night that the CCC won the majority in Saturday’s elections. The nine remaining seats went to the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) which still holds a parliamentary majority.
Back in 2018, ZANU-PF won 145 seats from the 210 available seats in parliament.
CCC spokesperson Fadzayi Mahere said the party’s victory was evidence that “citizens came together & achieved a resounding victory for the movement”.
The parliamentary and local government by-elections are seen as a preview of next year’s presidential elections in which the opposition is hoping to dislodge ZANU-PF, which has been in power since Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980.
Ahead of Saturday’s polls, the ruling party was accused of conniving with state institutions to intimidate opposition supporters.
A few weeks ago, a CCC member was killed in a central Zimbabwean town after he was stabbed with a spear on his way to a CCC rally. In February, 37 of its supporters were arrested at a rally.
