"I thank you for the big victory we have won," Kikwete told a crowd of several thousand people at the headquarters of his ruling Revolutionary Party (CCM) shortly after the national election board formally proclaimed him the winner of the east African nation's Wednesday's polls.

"Looking at the numbers, there are even non-CCM members who voted for me," he said, noting the whopping 80 percent of the vote he took in the race to succeed outgoing President Benjamin Mkapa, who was constitutionally barred from seeking a third five-year term.

"If you are still celebrating, please celebrate responsibly, don't ridicule the opposition because some of them supported us," said the 55-year-old Kikwete, who is to be sworn in as Tanzania's fourth president at ceremony in the commercial capital of Dar es Salaam on Wednesday.

The inauguration of Kikwete, Tanzania's current foreign minister, is expected to be attended by a host of African leaders, including South African President Thabo Mbeki, and a high-level US delegation.

According to official results released on Sunday, Kikwete won the election with 80.2 percent of the vote, demolishing nine other candidates in Tanzania's third election since political pluralism was introduced in 1992 and his party picked up 206 out of the 232 parliamentary seats up for grabs.

The CCM, which has ruled Tanzania since independence from Britain in 1961, had been heavily favored to win the elections, partly due to the inability of the fractious opposition to present a unified presidential candidate.

But at least two of the presidential also-rans, Ibrahim Lipumba of the Civic United Front (CUF) who finished a distant second to Kikwete with 11.66 percent of the vote, and Freeman Mbowe of the CHADEMA party who came third with 5.9 percent of the vote, have publicly accused the CCM of vote rigging.

"The election outcome is not what many citizens expected," Mbowe said on Tuesday. "We are still getting reports from all over the country, but there were many incidents of irregularities."

He accused Tanzania's National Electoral Commission (NEC) of bias in favor of the entrenched ruling party, echoing the complaints of others.

On Monday, Lipumba said election fraud was the only way to explain the CCM's massive victory but could offer no proof of the allegation.

Foreign poll monitors have generally praised the conduct of the polls, which were peaceful in most of the country except on the CUF stronghold of Zanzibar where at least 20 people were wounded in election-related violence.

Opposition parties had hoped to capitalize on widespread public frustration with corruption, endemic poverty and joblessness, and campaigned hard outside the country's towns and cities where the vast majority of Tanzania's 35 million people live.

But they had complained of an uneven playing field, accusing Kikwete, who was accompanied by Mkapa on the stump, of using state resources in his campaign.

Tanzania spent 31 years of its post-independence years strictly as a single-party state under the then socialist CCM and founding president Julius Nyerere who ruled until 1985.

But the landscape changed in 1992 when Nyerere's successor, Ali Hassan Mwinyi, allowed pluralism, with elections following three years later.

During his 10-year tenure, Mkapa moved the country closer to a free-market economy, earning Tanzania praise from international lenders but leaving the vast majority of people in poverty.

Kikwete has vowed to uphold Mkapa's policies.

All rights reserved. � 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.