Zimbabwe’s opposition on Tuesday defended its ”peaceful” legal challenge to the legitimacy of the government of longtime leader Robert Mugabe, re-elected last year in controversial polls.
Zimbabwe’s High Court is to begin hearing the challenge on November 3 when the opposition will argue that Mugabe, who has ruled the southern African country since 1980, won re-election through massive fraud, violence and intimidation of opposition supporters.
”This case is our peaceful weapon,” David Coltart, an MP and legal adviser of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), said during a visit to South Africa.
By challenging the results of the March 2002 polls, the MDC ”are exercising our constitutional right,” Coltart told a press conference in Johannesburg. ”We are showing we are a mature political party ready to use the law even if it’s subverted.”
The MDC, Zimbabwe’s main opposition party led by former union leader Morgan Tsvangirai, filed the challenge in April 2002, the month after the election which was widely condemned as flawed, prompting sanctions from the European Union and the United States and suspension from the Commonwealth.
Coltart said: ”The court procedure will show why the election was illegitimate. The case will also refocus world attention on the issue, the illegality of the government.”
However the MDC official said he feared that the High Court, whose president was appointed by Mugabe, ”are not taking this case seriously.”
Mugabe’s ruling Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF) party ”wants to clear Mugabe’s name,” he said, adding: ”I fear tactics to postpone the case.”
Coltart noted that the lawyer chosen for the case by the government is little known in Zimbabwe and that the presiding judge in the case has not yet been chosen.
Zanu-PF has demanded that the MDC drop the challenge and take part in talks to resolve Zimbabwe’s economic and political crises, a dialogue that broke down in May last year after the opposition launched the challenge. – AFP
