Zimbabwe's court to rule on presidential election challenge on Friday

Zimbabwe’s highest court is expected to issue a ruling on Friday on a petition in which the country’s main opposition party is seeking a nullification of July 30 presidential election won by the incumbent president, Emmerson Mnangagwa.

 

A court hearing was heard on Wednesday morning by a top Zimbabwe court which continued until about 7pm on Wednesday evening.

 

Zimbabwe’s Chief Justice‚ Luke Malaba‚ sitting with a full bench of nine judges of the Constitutional Court‚ on Wednesday said that the judgment on the country’s disputed presidential elections would be handed down at 2pm on Friday.

The judgment is reserved and the court should be able to come with a judgment at 2pm on the 24th of August which is Friday, said justice Luke Malaba, after hearing submissions for nearly 10 hours from lawyers of the country’s main opposition leader Nelson Chamisa, Mnangagwa and the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission.

The opposition's challenge forced Mnangagwa's planned inauguration on August 12 to be postponed.

The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) accused Zimbabwe's election commission of rigging the vote in favor of President Mnangagwa and his ruling ZANU-PF party. 

According to the official results, Mnangagwa won nearly 51 percent of the vote to defeat MDC leader Nelson Chamisa, who received just over 44 percent. 

The MDC says the commission inflated President Mnangagwa's vote totals, and says that more ballots were tallied at some polling stations than there were registered voters.

Chamisa told reporters on Monday that the MDC has a solid case that election results were fraudulent, and was confident the court would order a new election.

On Wednesday, the MDC Alliance’s legal representative‚ Thabani Mpofu‚ in his submissions prayed that the court nullify the result based on inflation of numbers in Mnangagwa’s favour‚ ghost voters and a faulty voters’ roll.

The main premise of Mpofu’s argument before the court was that “the numbers don’t lie” and said there was an inconsistency in the tally between the votes cast and the number of registered voters. He further claimed that in 16 constituencies‚ the results given by the electoral commission were starkly similar.

The top court has 14 days by law to make a ruling on the election. The last day for this provision is this Friday.

If the court upholds the incumbent president's win, his inauguration would take place within 48 hours.

The July 30 presidential poll was the first ever in which President Robert Mugabe's name was not on the ballot. 

The 94-year-old Mugabe was forced from office by a military takeover last year after nearly 40 years in power, surrendering the presidency to Mnangagwa, his vice president.