Biti hammers ‘frivolous’ Chinamasa application

By Tendai Biti

Good people, I have read with great regret and trepidation the Court application filed late yesterday [19 June 2013] afternoon by Justice Minister (Patrick) Chinamasa purportedly in compliance with the SADC resolution. 

With great respect to Chinamasa ,no one else could have done a better job at settling and filing an application that is so frivolous and vexatious that no reasonable court could grant the order sought.

When an application for condo nation ,departure or extension of any time limits is to be made ,the court need to be persuaded that there are good reasons for moving the dates ,that there are no suitable remedies.And that not granting the order would either result in chaos ,illegitimacy or a brutum fulmen .

Chinamasa goes to the Con Court and pleads one basis for the application ,namely ,that he is only making the application on the directive of a foreign body viz SADC.

In the application he in fact disowns any reference to the logic of why Zimbabwe needs a postponement .In fact in paragraph 16 of the affidavit he makes virtually makes an apology for bringing the application and says he only does because ,a foreign body Sadc has directed him to do so.

This is most unfortunate and regrettable.Firstly the affidavit should have been settled by the three political parties in the GNU and not the group of people that spend the entire Monday hidden in Chinamasa s office at the New Government Complex directly opposite my own Government Office.

Second the application should have been founded on the grounds of practicality and illegality that pursuaded SADC to rule in the manner they did.

Most importantly the application ignored that SADC was quick to come to a conclusion in the face of President Mugabe s concession that work was needed on the voter registration exercise justifying an extension.

Third there was also something mischievous in citing the PM ,Mutambara and Welsh as respondents when in fact they should have been co-applicants .

The bottom line therefore is that it can not been said that the Zimbabwean Government has complied with the SADC resolution .Fictional performance is not performance .

I hope that Zimbabwe can be liberated from the on going acerbic acrobatics of the chaos faction.The whole country can not be held to ransom by the insatiable megalomaniac plots of the chaos faction.

The current stalemate is a political and not a legal stalemate .We can easily come together and find a solution that accommodates all the parties and then bring about ,in the shortest reasonable time a free fair credible election in Zimbabwe .

We need to move quickly to bring the agreed amendments to the electoral act to parliament .We need to quickly bring a general laws amendment bill to parliament to deal with the necessary amendments to important legislation as directed by Sadc.

We need to move quickly on setting up the Independent Media Committee and deal with the security sector issues.All these things,with great respect ,do not require a lot of time ,if political will is present.

We can not continue on this trajectory. It is destructive unproductive and sterile. Happily for those of who seek chaos,there has never been a better time period. I want to say that we have never been cowards.We have never yielded on matters of principle. In short we will not blink.

In any event this is no longer our fight.It is a fight between good and evil.In short it is now God s fight.

Tendai Biti is the Secretary General of the MDC led by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai