A judge on Wednesday wrapped up hearing an opposition petition demanding the immediate release of Zimbabwe’s presidential election results and said he would deliver his judgement on Monday.
”Conscious of the urgency of the matter, I should be ready for a judgement on Monday afternoon,” Justice Tendai Uchena told the High Court in Harare on Wednesday.
”Judgement is therefore reserved until Monday at 2.30pm.”
”I have heard the parties since Saturday and I need to go over the statute that has been referred to. I also need to digest the submissions by both counsels,” he told journalists.
Earlier, lawyers for the electoral commission urged the High Court to dismiss the demand, saying the verification process for the result of the March 29 presidential election was still under way.
”The collation has to be finished, the verification has to be finished,” the commission’s lawyer, George Chikumbirike, told the hearing.
”The order they sought is so unreasonable. This application must be dismissed, it ought never to have been made.”
Opposition lawyers argued on Tuesday there could be no justification for delaying the results any longer, saying they were effectively already known the day after the polls when returns were posted outside polling stations.
The delay has led to widespread opposition accusations that it is part of a ploy to buy President Robert Mugabe — who has ruled Zimbabwe non-stop since independence from Britain in 1980 — more time to cook up a victory.
Despite the lack of an official result, Mugabe’s party has already demanded a recount of the whole election, saying it has uncovered a series of anomalies.
The commission announced the results of a simultaneous parliamentary election nearly a week ago in which Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party lost its majority to the opposition for the first time.
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party on Wednesday rejected a presidential run-off vote against Mugabe, saying its leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, had won an outright victory.
MDC secretary general Tendai Biti said the party would also reject recounts in the parliamentary poll. Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa said earlier the electoral commission had ordered a recount in five parliamentary seats and was considering nine others.
‘They should not stoke fires’
Meanwhile, the MDC Wednesday called on regional leaders to tell Mugabe to stand down when they meet at a summit in Zambia this weekend.
”We hope that President Mugabe will be asked to stand down” at Saturday’s extraordinary summit of the Southern African Development Community, Biti told a press conference.
Mugabe’s government has accused the opposition of trying to destabilise the country by claiming victory in the presidential election before results have been announced.
”The claims are basically to destabilise the country,” Chinamasa, one of Mugabe’s closest allies, told a press conference.
Tsvangirai has already declared himself the outright winner over Mugabe in the election, which was held on March 29.
The situation in Zimbabwe has become increasingly volatile in the election aftermath, with hard-line Mugabe supporters launching a new wave of invasions of white-owned farms.
Chinamasa insisted that white farmers were guilty of trying to stir up trouble and looking to reverse Mugabe’s land-reform programme under which about 4 000 farms have been expropriated by the state since the start of the decade.
”They [the farmers] should not stoke fires, they should not play with the tail of the lion,” he said.
”Any suggestion to reverse the land reforms is a non-starter. We will not take it lying down. The intention is to bring about a chaotic situation and we will not allow it.
”They only have themselves to blame for the consequences which will follow.” — AFP]
