Supreme Court orders election before 31 July 2013

By Lance Guma

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HARARE – The Supreme Court in Zimbabwe has ordered that presidential and parliamentary elections must be held by 31 July 2013. Chief Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku, a staunch Mugabe ally, made the ruling on Friday.

Just as Nehanda Radio reported two weeks ago, the NGO that sued Mugabe in court in an attempt to force an early election, is actually a bogus outfit being funded by the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO).

This month the Centre for Elections and Democracy in Southern Africa (CEDSA) led by Jealousy Mawarire, filed an urgent Supreme Court application seeking an order compelling Mugabe to immediately proclaim election dates.

The group argued that the delay in proclaiming an election date was “disenfranchising the electorate and causing unnecessary confusion when it was a legal fact that Parliament would be dissolved on June 29”.

On Friday Justice Chidyausiku, supported by six other pro-Mugabe judges, said it was now legally impossible to hold elections by June 29, but that Mugabe had violated Mawarire’s rights as a voter by not proclaiming an election date.

Judges who who supported the ruling include Chidyausiku, Vernanda Ziyambi, Paddington Garwe, Anne-Marie Gowora, Ben Hlatshwayo, George Chiweshe and Antonia Guvava. Justice Bharat Patel and Justice Luke Malaba however dissented.

The Court said President Mugabe should set a date “as soon as possible” and that “the elections should take place no later than 31st July 2013.”

In an interview with Nehanda Radio, exiled MDC-T Treasurer General Roy Bennett claimed his sources had confirmed to him that Mawarire’s CEDSA is sponsored by the CIO using funds from ‘Operation Spiderweb’.

In June 2012, a report from the international campaign group Global Witness alleged that mysterious Chinese businessman Sam Pa, based in Hong Kong, was quietly providing money to Mugabe’s regime in return for access to diamond mines and opportunities in cotton and property development.

It was alleged that Pa provided private donations to the CIO to fund covert activities against the opposition. From these funds the CIO set aside US$100 million for the secret operation codenamed ‘Spiderweb’.

Not only is the money being used to run operations that tarnish the image of members of the opposition but it is financing operations to retain power for President Mugabe and his Zanu PF party, including a push for early elections without any reforms having taken effect.

The Global Witness report reveals that Mr Pa has ploughed money into buying vehicles for the CIO, providing the intelligence service with 200 Nissan pickup trucks to boost its operational capability against the regime’s opponents.

Several bogus NGO’s are said to be receiving funding from ‘Operation Spiderweb’ as Mugabe looks for legal and political methods to engineer an early election. SADC we are told remains his biggest stumbling block.

Political commentator Makusha Mugabe told Nehanda Radio “They (Zanu PF) are holding on to any straw they can. I would not be surprised if they hold a gun to the judge’s head for something that forces an early election, but still they are stuffed because SADC won’t go along.”

In a December 2012 article entitled ‘Investigate Mugabe Plans To Steal Next Election’ Roy Bennett warned about the unfolding scheme saying;

“Dictatorship comes in many forms, but its objectives are always the same: to suppress the will of the people. I call on Zimbabweans and the international community to be aware of a strategy that Zanu PF are planning to use to the full in the forthcoming election.

“Firstly, they are using a compromised and partisan judiciary to silence voices of dissent. Secondly, they are filling the space with NGOs, newspapers and radio stations that are owned and operated by the CIO. In the process, they are also hoping to enrich themselves.

“These strategies are being used because Zanu PF is afraid of the international repercussions of open violence of the type used by them in 2008. They want to make the violence more secret and they also want to use other means to ‘win’,” Bennett wrote at the time.

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