Campaigner urges Africa to pressure Mugabe on poll

By Pascal Fletcher

DAKAR (Reuters) - The delay in the results from Zimbabwe's election is "a joke" and African leaders should press President Robert Mugabe's government to release them at once, a prominent African good governance campaigner said on Friday.

Zimbabwe's opposition says its leader Morgan Tsvangirai won the March 29 presidential poll, and Mugabe, who has ruled the southern African state since independence in 1980, has come under international criticism over the delay to the results.

Sudanese-born telecommunications entrepreneur Mo Ibrahim, who has established a $5 million (2.5 million pounds) prize to reward good government in Africa, said it was unacceptable that the outcome of the ballot was still not known three weeks after it was held.

"It's a joke ... the results should be released immediately," Ibrahim, one of Africa's most successful businessmen who is now lobbying for cleaner government on the continent, told Reuters during a visit to Senegal.

Ibrahim, who in 2006 set up a foundation dedicated to improving African leadership, said the continent's heads of state and government were not doing enough to force Zimbabwean authorities to announce the presidential poll outcome.

"I think they should be putting the pressure on," he said.

Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), which beat Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF party in a parallel parliamentary vote last month, accuses the Zimbabwean leader of using violence to try to rig a victory in an expected presidential run-off vote against the opposition leader.

The inaugural $5 million Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership -- the world's largest annual individual prize -- was awarded in 2007 to the former president of Mozambique, Joaquim Chissano.