(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-04-01 23:06

HARARE - Top members of President Robert Mugabe's party are worried the government may have lost weekend elections, an independent African monitor said Tuesday.

A pedestrian passes an election poster and newspaper banner headline in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, Tuesday April 1, 2008. [Agencies]

Zimbabwe's opposition has claimed victory in Saturday's presidential and parliamentary elections. Independent observers say trends support opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai winning the largest number of votes in the presidential race, but not enough to avoid a runoff.

Marwick Khumalo, head of the Pan-African Parliament observer mission, indicated the ruling ZANU-PF party was considering the possibility of defeat.

"I was talking to some of the big wigs in the ruling party and they also are concerned about the possibility of a change of guard," he told South African Broadcasting Corp.'s SAfm radio.

"ZANU-PF has actually been institutionalized in the lives of Zimbabweans, so it is not easy for anyone within the sphere of the ruling party to accept that 'maybe we might be defeated or might have been defeated,'" he added.

Related readings:  Zimbabwe opposition claims election lead  Zimbabwe parties in tight race

It took the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission 30 hours to release results for 132 parliamentary seats, giving the Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change 68 seats, including six for a breakaway faction. Mugabe's party had 64.

The commission has offered no results in the presidential race.

Lovemore Sekeramayi, an electoral official, went on state television Tuesday to say the commission was receiving presidential votes and would need to collate and verify them.

"We urge all Zimbabweans to remain patient as we go through this meticulous process," he said.

Some feared the delay was to allow time to rig the tally from Saturday's polls.

Tsvangirai's party said he was leading the presidential race with 60 percent of votes, based on counts reported from 128 of the 210 parliamentary districts.

The party gave Mugabe 30 percent of the votes and the rest to Simba Makoni, a former Mugabe loyalist. Tsvangirai lost narrowly in 2002, according to official results that observers charged were rigged. The opposition party also claimed it had an overwhelming lead of 96 of the 128 parliamentary seats for which it had results.

"We have won an election. Mugabe's victory is not possible given the true facts," Tendai Biti, secretary-general of Tsvangirai's party, told reporters Monday.

If the margins reported by the MDC hold, it would be a crushing blow to Mugabe, who headed a guerrilla movement that fought a seven-year bush war to end white minority rule and bring democracy to Zimbabwe in 1980.