By RAPHAEL TENTHANI, Associated Press Writer

BLANTYRE, Malawi - Opposition supporters rampaged through the streets Sunday after electoral officials declared President Bakili Muluzi's hand-picked successor the winner of Malawi's third multiparty elections.

AP Photo

The seven-member Mgwirizano coalition charged that Thursday's vote was rigged and maintained its leader had won.

Police fired rubber bullets as hundreds of coalition supporters poured into the streets in Blantyre's suburbs, erecting barricades and setting fire to three offices of the ruling United Democratic Front party.

Muluzi, Malawi's first democratically elected leader, hand-picked his economic planning minister Bingu wa Mutharika to succeed him after failing to alter the constitution to allow himself a third five-year term.

Mutharika of the ruling United Democratic Front won 1.1 million votes in the presidential race, compared to 846,457 for John Tembo of the opposition Malawi Congress Party, electoral officials said.

Gwanda Chakuamba, who heads the Mgwirizano coalition, took 802,386 votes, while two other candidates trailed with less than 300,000 apiece.

In percentages, the ruling party won 35 percent of the vote, to 27 percent for the Malawi Congress Party, 26 for Chakuamba's Mgwirizano coalition, while two other candidates had less than 9 percent apiece.

However, the ruling party failed to retain its parliamentary majority, picking up just 49 of the National Assembly's 193 seats, electoral officials said. The Malawi Congress Party won 60 seats, the coalition had 28 and independent candidates took 38. A number of smaller parties accounted for the remaining seats decided Thursday.

Parliamentary voting was postponed in six districts because of errors on the ballot papers.

"I will sacrifice my life, but I can't let these people steal the people's will," Chakuamba said. The coalition would use all available means to protest the result, said its general secretary, Ian Nankhuni. He did not elaborate.

Chief electoral officer Roosevelt Gondwe denied any vote tampering, saying it had taken time to verify the count in the impoverished southern African country. Ruling party officials also insisted the vote was free and fair

Thursday's vote was marred by irregularities before it even started. Balloting was postponed by two days after the Mgwirizano coalition protested to the High Court that the voters roll had not been published for verification. It claimed hundreds of thousands of names were missing from the list.

Just 3.1 million of the 5.7 million registered voters cast ballots in the presidential poll, electoral officials said Sunday.

International observers, who gave the vote a partial endorsement, also noted problems during campaigning.

For almost 30 years, this landlocked country, one of the world's poorest, was governed as an absolute dictatorship by self-proclaimed president-for-life Hastings Kamuzu Banda. Political opponents were jailed, tortured or killed while Banda amassed a fortune.

Under pressure from Western aid donors, he was removed in the first multiparty elections in 1994. Muluzi's reign brought greater freedom, human rights guarantees and new political parties. But despite promises to fight poverty, more than half of the 12 million population survive on less than a dollar a day.

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