THE Constitutional Court on Monday dismissed opposition MDC leader Douglas Mwonzora’s Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC’s) delimitation challenge for lack of jurisdiction, paving way for the general elections scheduled between July 26 and August 26.
Mwonzora’s application seeks to nullify the final delimitation report and postpone elections by six months saying the report was done in an unprocedural manner.
Delivering his judgement, Justice Luke Malaba said Mwonzora failed to show his cause for action.
“No cause of action has been advanced by the applicant in his application. Accordingly, the application is dismissed with no order as to costs. Full reasons to follow in due course,” said Malaba.
Addressing journalists after the judgement, Mwonzora described the ruling as unfair and political.
“The constitutional court has dismissed our application and their argument is that they don’t have jurisdiction, in other words they are saying they don’t have the power to hear the case.
“In our view the constitutional court has made a political judgement. It is an unfair judgement and we do not accept it.
“But we have received legal advice and the matter is not stopping here. We are going to continue with our struggle for democracy. We want free and fair elections in Zimbabwe and there can never be free and fair elections where the delimitation report is fundamentally flawed,” Mwonzora said.
Mwonzora’s lawyer Lovemore Madhuku said they are going to pursue other remedies.
“The constitutional court decided right at the outset, not to go into the merits of the application. They said we had not pleaded in a way that would accommodate them to hear the matter. They indicated that we were seeking two things, and they thought we should have sought one thing.
“As legal practitioners we respect the decision of the court. We are bound by the court but we think the court could have decided differently as we take instructions from our client,” said Madhuku.
