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Zim's Chief Justice appoints 17 more High Court judges to handle petit

Zim's Chief Justice appoints 17 more High Court judges to handle petit
By George Chellah in Harare, Zimbabwe
Thursday May 08, 2008 [04:00]

CHIEF Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku has appointed 17 more High Court judges to the Electoral Court to handle the bulk of election petitions that have been filed. And an independent election observer group, the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN), has stated that it cannot substantiate the exact figures given by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) as presidential results.

The Chief Justice's latest appointments come in the wake of the large number of election petitions, which have been filed before the Electoral Court by both the ruling ZANU-PF and opposition MDC.
Currently, ZANU-PF has filed petitions in 53 constituencies and the main opposition MDC has also filed petitions in 52 constituencies bringing the total number of petitions to 105.

This has prompted Chief Justice Chidyausiku to appoint 17 more High Court judges to the Zimbabwe Electoral Court to assist in presiding over the petitions in which two rivalry political parties are challenging the results.

Following the latest appointments, a total number of 20 judges would now preside over election disagreements.
Meanwhile, the state-broadcaster announced yesterday that Chief Justice Chiyausiku stated in a letter dated April 29, 2008 that the above appointments had been made in accordance with section 162 of Zimbabwe's Electoral Act.

It also reported that the appointments were also done in consultation with the Judicial Service Commission.

And in a statement released yesterday, ZESN, a network of 38 non-governmental organisations, which was observing aspects of the electoral process of the March 29 elections, stated that the delay by ZEC to release election results undermined its credibility.
"There have been calls for ZESN to verify the presidential results that were announced by ZEC on 2 May, 2008.

Taking cognisance of the fact that the ZEC National Command Centre was closed on the 6th of April and only to be opened on the 1st of May for tabulation of presidential results ZESN, cannot substantiate ZEC figures as the network is not aware of the chain of custody of the ballot materials during the aforementioned period. In addition the delay to announce the results was a major concern, not only to ZESN but the general public as well and this obviously undermined the impartiality, credibility and transparency of ZEC," they stated.

ZESN stated that it was also aware that there was no transparency in the verification, collation and tabulation of presidential results, as party agents who are required by the law to be present were not invited to witness the process.

"The second schedule of the Electoral Act, section 2 (2) and (3) provides that verification, collation and tabulation of constituency returns should be done in the presence of candidates, their chief election agents and observers," ZESN stated.

"In addition, ZEC failed to avail information on the final number and distribution of polling stations, distribution of postal votes, distribution of registered voters at close of inspection on 14 February 2008, which again makes it difficult for the network to ascertain and analyse the overall distribution of results."

ZESN further stated that it identified a total of 11,808 observers to participate in the March 2008 harmonised Elections.
"These were drawn from the country's 10 provinces and member organisations submitted names from 210 constituencies. Owing to logistical challenges, only 8,667 observers were accredited and subsequently deployed to observe the election in the 9,107 polling stations announced by ZEC giving a potential percentage coverage of 95 per cent," they stated.

ZESN also stated that it anticipates that it would freely continue observing the election process, particularly the run-off of the presidential elections.

Labels: ELECTIONS, ZIMBABWE

posted by MrK @ 12:43 PM