AFP, HARARE - Zimbabwe anxiously awaited Tuesday the first results from its presidential election as the opposition nosed ahead of Robert Mugabe's ruling party in the official count in the contest for parliament.

With over half of the results from 131 the 210 constituencies announced, the Movement for Democratic Change had won 67 parliament seats while Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) trailed slightly with 64.

Despite calls from foreign governments, there was still no official word on the battle for the presidency between 84-year-old Mugabe and MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai as well as long shot candidate Simba Makoni, an ex-finance minister.

The electoral commission meanwhile urged voters to remain patient, giving no word on when it would start announcing the presidential results. Cashing in on demand for information, vendors sold copies of the state-run Herald, the country's only daily newspaper, for three times the official cover price.

The front-page headline read: "ZANU-PF, MDC in tight contest". Some voters have expressed scepticism about the parliamentary results that have so far been released, having expected ZANU-PF to be wiped out as a backlash to the economic meltdown which has blighted the country.

The situation is slightly complicated by a split in MDC ranks, with five of the newly-elected lawmakers belonging to a faction at odds with Tsvangirai's leadership.

Based on its own calculations, the MDC is confident that it has clearly won both the presidential and parliamentary contest. However a respected coalition of NGOs which deployed some 8,000 local election observers has projected Tsvangirai will fall just short of the votes needed to deliver a knock-out blow to Mugabe.

According to the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN), Tsvangirai won 49.4 percent of the votes against 41.8 percent for Mugabe, a result which would necessitate a second round run-off later this month