March 29 (Reuters) - Following are some key facts on Zimbabwe's elections. * Voting in presidential, parliamentary and local government elections will be held on Saturday (March 29). The day is declared a public holiday. * The 8,998 polling stations will open at 7 a.m. (0500 GMT) and close at 7 p.m. * Zimbabwe has a total of 5,934,768 registered voters from a population estimated at over 13 million. * At stake in the parliamentary election are 210 House of Assembly seats and 60 seats in the Senate, the upper house. * Vote counting starts immediately after polls close. Parliamentary results will be announced in constituency centres and the presidential result in the capital Harare. * The main election observer mission is from the Southern African Development Community. Monitors from Western countries critical of Mugabe were barred. * The winner needs more than 51 percent in the presidential election to avoid a run-off. * President Robert Mugabe got 56 percent in the last election in 2002. Main rival Morgan Tsvangirai got 42 percent then. * In the 2005 parliamentary election, Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF won 78 of 120 contested seats while Tsvangirai's MDC won 41 seats. One seat went to an independent
Refugees, mainly from Zimbabwe and Somalia, demonstrate outside the parliament in Cape Town March 20, 2008. Many refugees fleeing economic hardship and conflict on the African continent face bureaucratic obstacles and ...
