Zimbabwe awaited a key court ruling yesterday which could order an end to the 10-day wait for presidential election results as pressure on President Robert Mugabe mounts both at home and abroad.
The high court was due to rule on a petition by the opposition demanding the electoral commission immediately declare the outcome of the March 29 polls in which Mugabe sought to extend his 28-year rule.
Mugabe’s ruling ZANU-PF party has already called for a complete recount of the poll even before the release of results and authorities have arrested seven election officials for allegedly undercounting votes cast for the president.
Morgan Tsvangirai, the 56-year-old opposition leader, maintains he secured enough votes to avoid a run-off and has accused ZANU-PF of gearing up for a “war” against the Zimbabwean people.
Tsvangirai visited South Africa on Monday on his first trip abroad since the March 29 polls. He met with Jacob Zuma, head of the ruling African National Congress and likely to be the next South African president.
Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) seized parliamentary control from ZANU-PF for the first time in simultaneous legislative elections but Mugabe’s ruling party is contesting enough seats to reverse that result.
All eyes will therefore be on Justice Tendai Uchena who promised to rule yesterday on an opposition bid to force the electoral commission to immediately release the presidential results.
Uchena announced on Monday that contrary to the assertions of the commission, whose leaders are appointed by Mugabe, his court did have jurisdiction to hear the case.
Mugabe is under enormous international pressure to allow the release of the results after a flurry of statements on Monday from the EU, the White House, the US State Department and the UN.
State media reported at the weekend that the ruling party had snubbed an approach from the MDC to form a unity government and was now demanding a complete recount of the presidential vote after detecting irregularities.
This was met with scorn in Washington.
“It’s overdue that the election results be announced,” US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.
“It’s interesting that they haven’t had the official election results announced, yet there is a call for a recount. I’m not sure of the logic train there,” McCormack said.
Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe ever since independence from Britain in 1980, has sought to stoke racial tensions and discredit the opposition as Western puppets who would reverse his land reforms.
“Land must remain in our hands. The land is ours, it must not be allowed to slip back into the hands of whites,” Mugabe was quoted as saying by the state daily Herald on Monday.
The Commercial Farmers Union, which represents white farmers in Zimbabwe, said Mugabe supporters had moved onto at least 30 white-owned properties and accused the president of orchestrating the campaign.
The farm invasions by the so-called war veterans serve as a reminder of the violence which followed Mugabe’s last electoral reverse when he lost a referendum on presidential powers in 2000.
However there are signs of a split emerging in the ranks of the war veterans, with one faction urging Mugabe to accept defeat.
“He [Mugabe] should do the honorable thing and eat humble pie and leave the people of Zimbabwe in peace,” Wilfred Mhanda, a senior official of the Zimbabwe Liberation Veterans Forum said in a statement on Monday.
“The failure by the ZANU-PF party and government to accept and admit defeat in the election is a flagrant flouting and violation of the popular will of the Zimbabwean electorate,” Mhanda said.
Faced with 80 percent unemployment and six-digit inflation, almost one-third of Zimbabwe’s 13 million people have left the country.
VAGUE: The criteria of the amnesty remain unclear, but it would cover political violence from 1999 to today, and those convicted of murder or drug trafficking would not qualify Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodriguez on Friday announced an amnesty bill that could lead to the release of hundreds of prisoners, including opposition leaders, journalists and human rights activists detained for political reasons. The measure had long been sought by the US-backed opposition. It is the latest concession Rodriguez has made since taking the reins of the country on Jan. 3 after the brazen seizure of then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. Rodriguez told a gathering of justices, magistrates, ministers, military brass and other government leaders that the ruling party-controlled Venezuelan National Assembly would take up the bill with urgency. Rodriguez also announced the shutdown
Civil society leaders and members of a left-wing coalition yesterday filed impeachment complaints against Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte, restarting a process sidelined by the Supreme Court last year. Both cases accuse Duterte of misusing public funds during her term as education secretary, while one revives allegations that she threatened to assassinate former ally Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The filings come on the same day that a committee in the House of Representatives was to begin hearings into impeachment complaints against Marcos, accused of corruption tied to a spiraling scandal over bogus flood control projects. Under the constitution, an impeachment by the
Exiled Tibetans began a unique global election yesterday for a government representing a homeland many have never seen, as part of a democratic exercise voters say carries great weight. From red-robed Buddhist monks in the snowy Himalayas, to political exiles in megacities across South Asia, to refugees in Australia, Europe and North America, voting takes place in 27 countries — but not China. “Elections ... show that the struggle for Tibet’s freedom and independence continues from generation to generation,” said candidate Gyaltsen Chokye, 33, who is based in the Indian hill-town of Dharamsala, headquarters of the government-in-exile, the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA). It
A Virginia man having an affair with the family’s Brazilian au pair on Monday was found guilty of murdering his wife and another man that prosecutors say was lured to the house as a fall guy. Brendan Banfield, a former Internal Revenue Service law enforcement officer, told police he came across Joseph Ryan attacking his wife, Christine Banfield, with a knife on the morning of Feb. 24, 2023. He shot Ryan and then Juliana Magalhaes, the au pair, shot him, too, but officials argued in court that the story was too good to be true, telling jurors that Brendan Banfield set
RSS