The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Zimbabwe poll

  • Zimbabwe’s opposition candidate challenges election result, inauguration halted

    Zimbabwe’s main opposition leader, Nelson Chamisa, filed a court challenge on Friday against President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s election victory, halting the President’s inauguration slated for Sunday.

    The first election since Robert Mugabe was forced to resign after a coup in November last year had been expected to end Zimbabwe’s pariah status and launch an economic recovery but post-election unrest has reminded the country of its violent past, Reuters reported.

    Chamisa’s lawyer, Thabani Mpofu, said he had asked the Constitutional Court to nullify the July 30 vote and that his application meant Mnangagwa’s swearing-in had been halted.

    Justice Minister Ziyambi Ziyambi told Reuters Sunday’s inauguration “would no longer happen” until the case is finalised.

    “On the basis of the evidence we have placed before the court, we seek in the main relief to the effect that the court should declare the proper winner and the proper winner is my client.

    “In the alternative, we seek that there be another election which complies with the dictates of the law.

    “There is no inauguration that will take place until the matter is determined by the court,” Mpofu told journalists outside the court.

     

     

  • Zimbabwe to hold elections July 30

    Zimbabwe President, Emmerson Mnangagwa, said on Wednesday the Southern African nation would hold its general elections on July 30.

    The elections will be the first since the army forced former President Robert Mugabe to resign last November.

    Mnangagwa, who became President following the military take-over, has promised to deliver free and fair elections to win over Zimbabwe’s critics at home and abroad, Reuters reported.

    Missing from the July ballot for the first time in 20 years will be Zimbabwe’s foremost political gladiators, Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai, the former opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader, who died from cancer in February.

    The vote will pit Mnangagwa against a clutch of opponents including 40-year-old Nelson Chamisa from the MDC.

    In a brief statement in an official government gazette, Mnangagwa said he had fixed July 30 “as the day of the election of the president, the election of members of the National Assembly and election of councillors.”

    Prospective candidates will be registered on June 14.

     

  • Zimbabwean opposition leaders to challenge Mugabe in election

    Two of Zimbabwean President, Robert Mugabe’s chief rivals said on Wednesday they were allying to deny the 93-year-old another term in office.

    Morgan Tsvangirai, 65, who was Zimbabwe’s prime minister in an uneasy coalition government with Mugabe from 2009 until 2013, said he and Joice Mujuru, who was Mugabe’s vice president for a decade until she was fired in 2014, would seek to form a coalition government to bring political change in the Southern African nation.

    “This is just the beginning of the building blocks towards establishing a broad alliance to confront ZANU PF between now and the next election in 2018,” Tsvangirai said, referring to the party led by Africa’s oldest leader.

    Mugabe, one of the last of the generation of African nationalists that sought the overthrow of white colonialists, has run Zimbabwe since 1980, Reuters reported.

    He was first prime minister then, in 1987, became president.

    In December his ZANU PF party confirmed him as its candidate for the next presidential election expected in mid-2018, when he will be 94.

    Tsvangirai, a three time loser to Mugabe, said he expected similar deals to the one with Mujuru would be struck with other political groups.

    Tsvangirai, who lost the 2013 presidential vote against Mugabe, is now leading MDC-T, a faction of the Movement for Democratic Change, that was formed after the party was weakened by splits over how to confront Mugabe.

     

     

  • MDC drops Mugabe election challenge

    MDC drops Mugabe election challenge

    Zimbabwe’s MDC party has dropped its legal challenge to President Robert Mugabe’s re-election, saying it could not get a fair hearing, BBC reports.

    It had filed a separate case seeking access to full details of the results from the electoral commission.

    But the High Court has delayed judgment in the case.

    The MDC says that without information such as the number of people not on the voters’ roll who voted, it cannot prove that the elections were fraudulent.

    The arguments in the MDC’s legal challenge were due to begin on Saturday.

    But MDC spokesman Douglas Mwonzora said that, without the extra information, the challenge “was going to be a mockery of justice,” reports the AFP news agency.

    The withdrawal of its challenge paves the way for Mr. Mugabe, 89, to be inaugurated for another five-year term.

    He has governed Zimbabwe since independence in 1980.

    Mr. Mugabe won with 61 per cent of the presidential vote against 34 per cent for MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who called the 31 July election a “huge farce.”

     

  • Zimbabwe holds presidential election

    Zimbabwe holds presidential election

    Zimbabweans are voting in fiercely contested presidential and parliamentary elections which have already been hit by fraud allegations, BBC reports.

    President Robert Mugabe, 89, has said he will step down after 33 years in power if he and his Zanu-PF party lose.

    Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has accused Zanu-PF of doctoring the electoral roll, a charge it has denied.

    Campaigning was mostly peaceful, with few reports of intimidation.

    Zanu-PF and the MDC have shared an uneasy coalition government since 2009 under a deal brokered to end the deadly violence that erupted after a disputed presidential poll the previous year.

    Mr. Tsvangirai won the most votes in the first round, but pulled out of the run-off with Mr. Mugabe because of attacks on his supporters.

    The government has barred Western observers from monitoring Wednesday’s elections, but the African Union (AU) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC), as well as local organisations, have been accredited.

    Polls opened at 07:00 local time (05:00 GMT) and are due to close at 17:00 GMT.

    The turnout is expected to be high among the 6.4 million people registered to vote, with tens of thousands of people attending rallies in recent weeks. Results are expected within five days.