Zimbabwe: 'Grave Concerns' Over Election Zimbabwe: Mugabe's Party Claims Win Updated: 2:28pm UK, Thursday 01 August 2013 Zimbabwe Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has dismissed the country's national elections as a "huge farce" and the results invalid because of intimidation and ballot-rigging by President Robert Mugabe's ruling party, which has claimed victory. "In our view, that election is null and void," he said, after a senior Zanu-PF source earlier claimed a resounding victory for President Mugabe in Zimbabwe's presidential and parliamentary elections. The opposition, Mr Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), immediately claimed the elections had been "a monumental fraud" and held an emergency meeting. Riot police took up positions outside the Zanu-PF party's headquarters in central Harare and other key locations in the capital, including an MDC office. The party later withdrew what it said was an unauthorised message on its Twitter feed claiming a landslide win, and insisted that it was awaiting the release of the official count. It said as many as one million eligible voters were not on the electoral roll, and urban voters, who mainly favour Mr Tsvangirai, had been turned away from polling stations in their thousands. It also cast doubt on the authenticity of the voters' roll, noting that 99.97% of voters in the countryside were registered, compared to 67.9% in urban areas. "It is not sufficient for elections to be peaceful for elections to be credible," ZESN chairman Solomon Zwana said. They must offer all citizens ... an equal opportunity to vote. Separate reports claimed key MDC members had lost their seats, even in the capital, and that the election was looking like a "disaster" for Mr Tsvangirai. The presidential contest pit the 89-year-old incumbent President Mugabe against his main rival Mr Tsvangirai, who his supporters believed a big turnout would favour, blunting the impact of any manipulation of the vote. It is the third time Mr Tsvangirai has tried to unseat President Mugabe, who denies vote rigging and said he would step down if he failed to extend his 33-year grip on power for another five years. Sky Correspondent Emma Hurd, in South Africa, said: "Analysts inside Zimbabwe say it was going to be close anyway - that Robert Mugabe was not going to be wiped out in a landslide victory by the opposition. But what all independent observers seem to agree on is that there will have been some element of rigging in the process. The question remains how much, and whether Robert Mugabe really needed to do it in the first place to win.