Zimbabwe's elections have been declared "free and credible" by the African Union, despite observers noting a number of practises that suggested heavy rigging.
Despite an admission by the head of the African Union mission, Olsegun Obasanjo, that his monitors noted some apparent irregularities, he said they did not constitute evidence of systematic tampering.
Officials say 89-year-old Robert Mugabe has been returned to power with a two-thirds majority.
Robert Mugabe casts his vote with wife, Grace However, while declaring the elections to be free, the Union did not go so far as to declare them fair.
Mr Obasanjo, said: "Yes, the election is free," and he described the vote as credible unless any evidence to the contrary emerged
Significantly he asked election authorities to investigate reports that tens of thousands of eligible voters were turned away from the vote which marks an unbroken run of 33 years in power for Mr Mugabe.
Another poll monitoring group in Zimbabwe said as many as a million of the more than six million eligible voters were prevented from casting ballots.
Mr Obasanjo, a former Nigerian president, said: "If 25% were not allowed, then, yes, the election is fatally flawed."
Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, Mr Mugabe's main opponent in the presidential vote, has declared the election "null and void".
Official results announced by the election commission on Friday morning showed Mr Mugabe's Zanu-PF capturing 54 of the 210 parliament seats and Mr Tsvangirai's party winning 19 seats so far.
Voters queue to get into polling stations Full results on the presidential and parliament votes have been promised by Monday.
Among the irregularities, the African Union found the electoral commission printed 8.7 million ballot papers for 6.4 million voters – 35% above the number of registered voters. This is against the international standard of 5%-10%.
The late publicity on the location of voting stations just 48 hours before stations opened also contributed to the high number of voters who were turned away because they were not at correct polling sites.
Life goes on as normal as a two-thirds majority declared for Mr Mugabe Monitors also reported a high number of disabled, elderly or other "assisted voters" being helped to cast their ballots by polling officers who may have influenced them against their free will.
Speaking from Harare, Sky's Special Correspondent Alex Crawford said: "At the moment the people we are seeing and speaking to are all very disgruntled members of the electorate who say they were unable to vote for one reason or another.
"When they turned up at the voting stations the polling stations they were told their names were not on the voting lists that they had been registered to vote in polling stations which were many, many kilometres away so they felt that they were disenfranchised."
She said she had heard evidence of dead people's names being used to vote and of a number of procedural irregularities.
Morgan Tsvangirai declares the election 'null and void' She said the Southern African Development Community, a regional body, "were very much holding back from saying it was a fair election. They said it was definitely free, people appeared to be able to vote and it was very peaceful but they stopped short of saying it was fair or credible."
The head of the observer mission for the Southern African Development Community described the election as "very free" and "very peaceful".
He also noted that there were some violations and a full analysis was still under way.
"The question of fairness is broad and you cannot answer it within one day," said Bernard Membe, who is also Tanzania's foreign minister.
"And so be sure that within 30 days, through our main report, the question of fairness may come."
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