Zimbabwe: Mugabe Wins Two-Thirds Majority

President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party has won a two-thirds majority in Zimbabwe's parliamentary elections, official results show.

He won more than 150 of 210 seats, according to the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission's results from Wednesday's vote.

Mr Mugabe's main rival, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, denounced the election as a "huge farce" and "sham", alleging massive vote rigging by Zanu-PF.

Zimbabwe's largest domestic observer group also called the elections "seriously compromised".

Earlier, a Zimbabwean election commissioner resigned over the way the presidential and parliamentary vote was managed.

Mkhululi Nyathi's departure from the nine-member Zimbabwe Electoral Commission is likely to add to the dispute both inside and outside the country.

"While throughout the whole process I retained some measure of hope that the integrity of the whole process could be salvaged along the way, this was not to be," he said in a resignation letter seen by Reuters.

The vote passed off peacefully and received broad approval from African observers.

Mr Mugabe, 89, has governed the former British colony, then known as Rhodesia, since independence in 1980.

Zimbabwe: Mugabe Warned About Election 'Theft'

Zimbabwe's opposition leader has warned of renewed unrest in the country if President Robert Mugabe attempts to "steal" this week's election and extend his 33-year grip on power.

Voters go to the polls on Wednesday, five years after the last national vote descended into violence as Mr Mugabe fought to avoid defeat. 

"I am sure there is the potential for unrest if people are not given the opportunity to vote and if the result does not reflect their national mood," Morgan Tsvangarai, the opposition leader and Zimbabwean Prime Minister said.

Mr Tsvangarai's party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), has been governing in a tense power-sharing agreement with Mr Mugabe for the past four years.

He believes he has the support to oust the 89-year-old from office, but has flagged up irregularities in the voter registration rolls that could mar the credibility of the election.

Human rights organisations say the existence of up to a million "ghost voters" - people who have died but have not been removed from the electoral register - could be exploited by Mr Mugabe. 

Six hundred African observers, invited to monitor the vote, have reported no incidents of violence in the final days of campaigning.

President Mugabe promised a "free and fair" vote during his final campaign rally in front of a crowd of 40,000 people in the capital, Harare, on Sunday. 

"We are not forcing people to vote this way or that way," he told reporters. 

There are no official opinion polls in Zimbabwe, but Mr Mugabe - now the world's oldest leader - can still count on significant support across the country and the election is expected to be close.

He has shrewdly claimed the credit for the successes of the power-sharing government - while blaming any ongoing problems on the opposition. 

The country's crippled economy has started to recover since the MDC's Tendai Biti took over as finance minister, bringing an end to the food shortages that led to starvation in rural areas. 

The spiralling inflation rate - the Zimbabwean dollar was famously printed in 100 trillion dollar notes - has been tackled by abandoning the local currency in favour of the US dollar and South African rand.