OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Wednesday
ZIMBABWES Supreme Court has delivered a stinging rebuke to President Robert Mugabe, overturning a presidential decree which sought to ban challenges against results of last year’s parliamentary election, even where corrupt or illegal practices were committed.
Ruling in favour of an appeal by the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), Chief Justice Anthony Gubbay said the Electoral Act of 2000 infringed candidates’ right to seek legal recourse when election results were disputed.
”[The applicants] have a civil right to challenge the result of an election which is claimed to have been tainted by corrupt and illegal practices. It is the existence of such civil rights that the applicants are seeking to have determined by the High Court,” he added.
The Supreme Court heard the MDC appeal earlier this month against Mugabe’s December decree that courts could not nullify the results of the June 2000 polls ”even if corrupt or illegal practices were committed”.
The decree had effectively invalidated the MDC’s legal challenge in 39 of the 62 seats won by ZANU-PF on the grounds that the ruling party cheated and ran a violent campaign to ensure victory in the face of an unprecedented opposition challenge.
The government said the MDC was being used by external forces to destabilise the country by challenging ZANU-PF’s election victory in some seats.
The Supreme Court decision opens the way for the High Court, which had postponed hearing the MDC appeals pending the Supreme Court ruling, to proceed with the case. The hearings are expected to run until May.
The MDC, led by former trade union leader Morgan Tsvangirai, won an unprecedented 57 of the 120 parliamentary seats, while a smaller opposition party took one seat in the stiffest election since Mugabe came to power at independence from Britain in 1980.
The government said vote recounts ordered by the courts in July in three of the 39 constituencies challenged by the MDC – which saw ZANU-PF candidates emerge with even bigger majorities than at the first count – had proved the MDC was pursuing a ”frivolous and vexatious” case.
Mugabe sparked controversy in October when he pardoned from prosecution all those who had been arrested for violence during the election campaign. – Reuters
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