There are reports that senior Zimbabwe Electoral Commission officials are under 24-hour surveillance by government, who fear they might leak information regarding the presidential poll which the MDC claims to have won outright.

The MDC are accusing Robert Mugabe, now in opposition in parliament, of stalling to provide time to alter the results to show that Tsvangirai got less than 50 percent and that a run-off is now required.

Liberty Mupakati, a former intelligence operative with the CIO, claims that members of the top echelons of ZEC are more or less under house arrest as they are not allowed to leave the confines of their hotel, which also doubles as the poll collation centre, and that they are literally under CIO guard 24/7.

'I find it inconceivable that the newly constituted Zimbabwe Electoral Commission is coming up with flimsy excuses to justify their utter failure to announce the victor in the presidential elections. The real reason why the results have not been released is to enable Mugabe and his party to explore alternatives, specifically to increase the number of votes that he received in the just ended elections,' wrote Mupakati.

He told Newsreel his sources were impeccable that even die-hard Zanu-PF people talk openly about Mugabe having comprehensively lost to Tsvangirai.

'I can testify that late on Sunday (March 30) I was informed by one of these officials that Mugabe had been beaten by Tsvangirai by 57,8 percent of the poll to 39,9 percent. Armed with these results Chiwenga, Chihuri, Bonyongwe, Shiri and Paradzai Zimondi of prisons, then approached Mugabe at State House. Mugabe, in a state of shock, sent them back to Chiweshe to ask him to reverse the result.

Chiweshe told them he was bound by his professional ethics as a lawyer and could not reverse the election result. They pleaded with him to try his best to save the situation. Chiweshe tried his best - the results of the presidential election have not been announced since then - for a week,' Mupakati said.

The MDC have embarked on a diplomatic offensive to try and pressure the international community to intervene and force Mugabe to either release the results or accept defeat and step down.