The MDC-T is still hopeful that its challenge against the delimitation exercise, which is before the High Court, will be successful with elections set to be held in about two months.
Party leader, Douglas Mwonzora, had filed a constitutional challenge seeking to overturn the Delimitation report due to flaws with boundaries set by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC).
The case was, however, thrown out by a full Constitutional Court bench led by Chief Justice Luke Malaba on May 8, 2023, stating that the application lacked jurisdiction.
Following the dismissal of MDC-T’s Constitutional Court application, ZEC is continuing with preparations for the upcoming August 23 harmonised elections and will conduct the polls under the newly delimited boundaries.
Regardless of the preparations, Mwonzora said the party was still pursuing their delimitation case at the High Court and claimed it could still be heard because it was filed before the election date pronouncement
“The only case that is alive in the courts is the case of the MDC in the High Court where we are challenging the delimitation because this case was filed before the proclamation date, so we are actually trying to find a date for the set down of this case,” he said in an interview with CITE.
He also indicated the Constitutional Court did not consider the merits of their case.
“No, it wasn’t dismissed by the Constitutional Court, what the judges said was they were refusing to hear us. They did not dismiss the case on merit. The case is pretty much alive and our chances of winning it at the High Court are more than 90 percent,” said Mwonzora.
Despite criticism that MDC-T wanted to ‘stop elections’, Mwonzora stated the party felt vindicated because people, including members of other opposition parties, experienced ZEÇ’s flaws when their names mysteriously vanished from the voters’ roll or were moved to other wards.
“I feel totally vindicated. I am surprised the main complainant now are people who were trying to frustrate my case, in particular the Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC), who even tried to hire a lawyer and thwart our case in the constitutional court. They are themselves now trying to mount a legal challenge against the voters roll and people who can’t find their names in the voters’ roll,” he said.
“We are totally vindicated and I’m happy that Zimbabweans are now seeing through the hypocrisy of many people.”
It was reported that CCC was preparing to mount a court case against ZEC after several people failed to find their names on the voters’ roll during the inspection exercise.
Meanwhile, the MDC leader said the party was optimistic about winning due to the unconstitutional issues they highlighted in their argument.
“We believe we can because of the straightforward nature of the challenge. For example, there is no census report and delimitation cannot happen without a census report or without census figures,” Mwonzora said.
“Another issue we are contesting is there must be equality in the number of registered voters and if there is to be variation, it must not be more than 20 percent and in 119 constituencies out of the 210, there is a variation of more than 20 percent. So it is a very simple matter for the judges to decide. There is no argument against it.”
