Zimbabwe’s opposition was pushing for the High Court to consider an urgent petition on Saturday demanding the immediate release of results from last weekend’s presidential election, its lawyer said.
”We are doing everything in our powers to have it heard today but we are not expecting anything before lunchtime,” Alec Muchadehama said.
”We have no reason why they have not yet announced the results and are beginning to take issue on whether the ZEC [Zimbabwe Electoral Commission] is independent or not.”
According to the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) application, a copy of which has been seen by Agence France-Presse, the party says the week-long silence over the results cannot be justified.
”The delay in announcing the presidential election result is unjustified and has generated much anxiety within the applicants’ members, the nation at large and even in the international community,” reads the application, which was lodged at the court on Friday.
”The applicant has the right to access such information upon demand and request.
”The delays in announcing the election results are creating an undesirable opportunity for tampering with the results of the poll and thereby casting into doubt the authenticity and reliability of the eventual results to be declared.”
While the ZEC has already announced the results for Parliament, giving the MDC a marginal win over President Robert Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF party, there has still been no word on the outcome of the simultaneous presidential election.
The MDC says there can be no justification for the hold-up as the results of both the parliamentary and presidential elections have already been posted outside each of the 9 000-odd polling stations.
Counting at polling stations was over and done with within hours and results were generally known within the day, but the ZEC says it needs time to collate the results before officially proclaiming victors.
”It’s an exercise to delay an announcement of what they are supposed to know already,” said Muchadehama.
The MDC has published its own results, saying its leader Morgan Tsvangirai just scraped past the 50% threshold needed to avoid a second-round run-off.
The Zanu-PF has acknowledged Mugabe did not deliver a knock-out blow to Tsvangirai in the first round and gave him the green light on Friday to contest a run-off.
‘Retribution’
Meanwhile, the MDC said on Saturday it feared Mugabe was pushing for a presidential election run-off as part of a ploy to exact revenge, and called for international intervention to avert bloodshed.
”For Mugabe, a run-off is a strategy for retribution,” the MDC’s chief spokesperson, Nelson Chamisa, said.
”He is defeated, he wants a chance of retribution.”
Chamisa said international intervention would avoid a repeat of the violence that followed Mugabe’s defeat in a referendum eight years ago when he failed to get approval for changes to the Constitution.
”He was beaten at the referendum in 2000 and we all know the violence that followed.
”This is what we want to avoid, rather than have the international community intervene after there has been bloodshed.” — AFP
