Published by the government of Zimbabwe
10 May 2008
Harare — Judge President Rita Makarau yesterday met some lawyers handling election petitions for both Zanu-PF and MDC-T and agreed that all the cases should be completed in six months, as required by the country's electoral laws.
The two main political parties filed a total of 105 election petitions between them.
Zanu-PF is contesting results in 53 constituencies while MDC-T is seeking to overturn those in 52 constituencies. The Electoral Court, which has an obligation to ensure that the petitions are concluded within the stipulated legal period, had invited lawyers representing the parties to discuss the procedure to be followed to enable the court meet the deadline.
Justice Makarau, who chaired the meeting alongside Justices Tendayi Uchena and Antonia Guvava, said for the sake of expediency, the petitions would be "judge-driven" to ensure that there would be no delays.
"The purpose of this meeting is to invite your comments on how best we can deal with the petitions," said Justice Makarau, adding that, as judges, they were ready to hear all the cases.
She said if the cases were to be dealt with in terms of the rules of either the High Court or the Electoral Court, it would take more than six months to finalise the cases.
To ensure expediency, Justice Makarau said, it was important for all the stakeholders to come up with hybrid procedures that should
be adopted.
Among the cocktail of procedures agreed to were that the judges should manage the petitions and regular "case management", meetings held between the judges and the lawyers and their clients.
They also agreed to make it mandatory to for the candidates to be present each time a pre-trial conference is held.
Only those with good reasons would be excused from such meetings.
The lawyers also agreed with the Judge President's suggestion to sit long hours and work even during the weekends to beat the time. They also agreed to have the hearing of some of the petitions to be conducted at other chosen venues away from the courts.
"We will be sitting for long hours and outside working days. So ensure that once we start, your social and domestic lives are organised accordingly," said Justice Makarau.
The lawyers also unanimously agreed to consolidate election petitions with allegations of similar facts.
The Judge President said the court had already come up with composite petitions for the sake of progress, a move that was welcomed by the lawyers. All the judges of the High Court were appointed to the Electoral Court to deal with the petitions. The appointments, which took effect from April 29, were made in terms of Section 162 of the Electoral Act.
In its petitions, Zanu-PF is accusing MDC-T of bribing election officials while the opposition party is counter-accusing Zanu-PF candidates and its supporters of vote-buying and interfering with the electoral process.
In the synchronised presidential, parliamentary and council elections, the opposition MDC-T won 99 seats against Zanu-PF's 97. The MDC got 10 seats.
Zanu-PF won 30 Senate seats with MDC-T and MDC sharing the other 30. There was no absolute winner in the presidential election, which now requires a run-off between President Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai.
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