Among a series of complaints, Tsvangirai queried the suspiciously high number of voters who were turned away from polling stations in urban areas, which are considered opposition strongholds.
He also charged that his party’s supporters in rural areas were intimidated by Mugabe party backers into feigning illiteracy and voting in the presence of police and election officers.
The Constitutional Court confirmed Mugabe as president and declared the elections “free, fair and credible”, saying the results “reflected the free will of the people of Zimbabwe”.
Eldred Masunungure, a political scientist from the University of Zimbabwe, said the event was at once Mugabe’s victory lap and his “last supper”.
“This inauguration is being projected as the crowning of a victory of a struggle for the past 13 years against big Western powers,” he said.
There is however also an “unintended meaning”, he said. “It can be read as a farewell event for Mugabe. It reminds one of Jesus’s Last Supper.”
The electoral commission declared Mugabe winner with 61 percent of the vote, against 34 percent for former prime minister Tsvangirai.
The vote ended a shaky power-sharing government formed by Mugabe and Tsvangirai four years ago to avoid a tip into all out conflict following a bloody presidential run-off election in 2008.
Local observers judged the elections flawed and Western powers have raised serious doubts over the vote.
But regional groupings the Southern African Development Community and the African Union were less critical.
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