Zambia's opposition party disputes presidential election results

Zambia's opposition party on Friday disputed figures of Tuesday's presidential election announced by the electoral body so far that have put governing party candidate Edgar Lungu in the lead.

According to the results from 111 constituencies out of 150 announced so far, Lungu of the governing Patriotic Front (PF) has maintained his lead with 670,397 or 48.87 percent votes while Hakainde Hichilema of the opposition United Party for National Development (UPND) is second with 641,343 votes or 46.75 percent. But the UPND has said the results announced by the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) were incorrect and the party has since sought a meeting with the electoral body. "Not only have there been significant miscalculations in the counting process, with the wrong number attributed to the wrong constituencies, some published numbers highly inflated and clear failure to calculate basic arithmetic. These incorrect figures have also now been published by the print media this morning," Dipak Patel, theUPND's campaign manager said in a statement. The opposition party is seeking full clarity on all final results before the electoral body could make any further announcement of results. The election, which were held on Jan. 20 to replace late President Michael Sata, have seen voting continuing until Friday in some areas due to rains which made transporting of materials and staff difficult. The election was also marred voter apathy.

Eleven candidates contested the presidential election. Endi