Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai is due in court on Monday to challenge President Robert Mugabe’s contested victory in last year’s polls. Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), wants a rerun of the election that returned his 79-year-old rival to office.
Mugabe was declared the winner by a majority of some 400 000 votes. But the MDC leader, a former trade unionist, filed court papers challenging Mugabe’s victory in April last year, a month after the election.
He claims that Mugabe, who has been in power for 23 years, violated electoral laws and used dirty tactics to win himself a fifth term in office.
The long-awaited trial comes after Tsvangirai went to court in July to get an order to have the date of the petition set down. His lawyers accused the state of employing delaying tactics to hold up the petition.
According to Zimbabwean law, an election petition should be heard as a matter of priority.
Zimbabwe is deeply divided between Tsvangirai’s supporters and those of Mugabe’s ruling Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF).
Efforts have been made to get the two parties talking, but Mugabe says he will not talk to his MDC opponent unless he accepts him as the legitimate head of state.
Fledgling inter-party talks brokered by Nigeria and South Africa last year were deadlocked after Tsvangirai filed his petition, angering the Zanu-PF camp.
Tsvangirai has ruled out dropping his election petition.
MDC lawyers claim Mugabe tightened electoral laws to disqualify large numbers of voters.
These included thousands of white voters — perceived to be opposition supporters — and millions of black Zimbabwean voters working abroad.
An estimated three million Zimbabweans who have escaped economic problems at home now live in South Africa, while tens of thousands more have gone to Botswana, Mozambique and Britain.
According to court papers quoted in the press this week, Mugabe’s lawyers have dismissed Tsvangirai’s challenge of sections of the electoral laws as ”misdirected” and ”over-ambitious”.
The opposition claims the number of polling stations set up in the MDC strongholds of Harare and Chitungwiza were reduced, causing massive queues of people, some of whom did not get to vote.
They will also argue that the supervisory body tasked with overseeing the election was improperly constituted, and therefore unqualified to run the polls.
If the first part of the legal challenge fails, the MDC will argue that Mugabe’s party used violence, intimidation, bribery and vote-rigging to win the election.
This is the second high-profile trial Tsvangirai has been involved in this year.
In February he entered the dock on trial for allegedly plotting to assassinate Mugabe ahead of last year’s election. That trial was adjourned and is only likely to resume next year. Tsvangirai denies the charges, which carry the death penalty on conviction.
He faces a second charge of treason for allegedly inciting his supporters to overthrow the government in June this year -‒ another charge he denies.
International observer groups to last year’s election were divided in their verdict. Some African observer groups, including one from South Africa, concluded that the vote was free and fair.
Others, including one from the Commonwealth and others from Western nations, condemned the poll as fundamentally flawed.
The MDC stormed onto the country’s political stage in 2000 general elections, winning nearly half of the contested seats. – Sapa-AFP