The High Court in Zimbabwe on Monday began hearing a challenge by opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai against President Robert Mugabe’s victory in last year’s disputed polls.
The hearing comes 18 months after Tsvangirai first filed a petition against the election, claiming Mugabe violated electoral laws and used dirty tactics to win himself a fifth term in office.
Tsvangirai’s South African lawyer, Jeremy Guantlett, told Justice Ben Hlatshwayo on Monday that the disputed poll was conducted in an environment that was ”blatantly unconstitutional”.
The start of the long-awaited petition attracted a large audience that crammed into a courtroom in the Harare High court. As Tsvangirai, his wife and other senior officials from his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) looked on, the MDC lawyer told the judge that a state-appointed body tasked with supervising the election was not properly constituted because it had only four members instead of five.
He argued that the Electoral Supervisory Commission, whose members are appointed by Mugabe, had scuttled chances of a free and fair election.
”The fairness and genuineness of the elections were stifled at birth by that extraordinary sight of the incumbent, the main contender of the elections, being set up as a main rule-maker in an election in which he was one of the two main actors,” Gauntlett said.
Tsvangirai, who has posed the greatest challenge ever to Mugabe’s 23-year grip on power, wants a rerun of the March 2002 poll, which was largely condemned by Western observer groups, as well as one from the Commonwealth.
They said that the poll had been fundamentally flawed and marred by violence and vote-rigging.
However other African observer groups, including one from neighbouring South Africa, a key ally of Zimbabwe, declared that the election had been free and fair.
Tsvangirai’s lawyers also intend to argue that Mugabe tightened electoral laws to disqualify large numbers of voters ahead of the poll.
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.
They also claim that the number of polling stations set up in the MDC strongholds of Harare and Chitungwiza were reduced, causing massive queues of people, many of whom did not get to vote. – Sapa-AFP