Zimbabwe’s defeated presidential candidate Morgan Tsvangirai on
Monday prepared to mount a legal and political challenge against the
“sham” election that looks set to extend Robert Mugabe’s 33-year rule.
Tsvangirai’s allies have announced they will launch a
constitutional court challenge against the results of Wednesday’s
election, which handed Mugabe a thumping 61 percent of the vote.
“Our lawyers are very busy at work. We will be lodging the
presidential challenge before Friday,” Douglas Mwonzora, spokesman for
Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), told AFP.
The case could delay 89-year-old Mugabe’s inauguration for another five-year term.
Once the complaint is lodged, the country’s top court has 14 days to reach a decision.
Western nations, including former colonial ruler Britain, voiced
serious doubts about the election while the regional SADC bloc said it
was “free and peaceful” but stopped short of describing it as fair.
But MDC insiders acknowledge that finding a smoking gun for electoral fraud and navigating the notoriously polarised court system with be
fiendishly difficult.
The ruling ZANU-PF has welcomed the prospect of a court challenge
over the vote – the first since bloody 2008 elections led to the
formation of an uneasy power-sharing pact between Mugabe and Tsvangirai.
“What they are doing is a good thing, it’s a wise road to take,”
ZANU-PF spokesman Rugare Gumbo said, while expressing confidence that
the challenge will fail.
Constitutional law expert Lovemore Madhuku said that given the 61-34
percent vote split against Tsvangirai, his chances “are nonexistent,
completely nonexistent”.
“It’s not a margin that normally gets challenged in court.”
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