Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa, the leader of the ruling ZANU-PF party, narrowly won the elections on Thursday, the country’s election commission said. Mnangagwa won 50.8% of the vote, while his opponent, the MDC Alliance’s Nelson Chamisa, secured 44.8%.

This is the country’s first election since Robert Mugabe was ousted in November after 37 years of rule.

MDC Chairperson Morgen Komichi made an impromptu televised statement at the office of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, rejecting the results, The Guardian reported. Komichi claimed the results were fraudulent, and the party would challenge them in court. Subsequently, the police removed Komichi from the commission’s stage.

Chamisa told reporters that he had won the poll, telling reporters the Zanu-PF was trying to “bastardise the result, something we will not allow”, BBC reported. However, the poll body rejected Chamisa’s claim.

Clashes broke out in Harare on Wednesday after the results began to trickle in, signalling a ZANU-PF victory. There were reports that the Army shot dead three people.

Priscilla Chigumba, the chairperson of the electoral commission, on Thursday asked the country to “move on” from the “blemishes” of Wednesday’s incidents. “May God bless this nation and its people,” she said.

Mnangagwa said he was “humbled” to be elected president of Zimbabwe. “Though we may have been divided at the polls, we are united in our dreams,” he tweeted on Thursday night.

Earlier, the president said he had ordered an independent investigation into the violence in Harare on Wednesday. “We have been in communication with Nelson Chamisa to discuss how to immediately diffuse the situation,” he tweeted.