Latest News Editor's Choice


Opinion / Columnist

'Chamisa is de jure leader as per 2.6m votes' - focus, at issue is appointments

11 May 2019 at 08:31hrs | Views
Too many cooks spoil the broth. MDC has certainly suffered the ill effects of having too many learned lawyers. One says one this the second says that and the third says something else that is neither this nor that and meanwhile the party has blundered from pillar to post as it is pulled in all direction in the ensuing confusion.

"I have just finished reading High Court judgement against the #MDC," twittered MDC A Senator and lawyer David Coltart. "I am profoundly shocked by the reasoning of the learned Judge. The judgement is seriously flawed in numerous respects. The application should have been dismissed on several different grounds but wasn't."

The judgement is seriously flawed in numerous respects and yet you failed to name even one!
The application should have been dismissed on several different grounds and again he failed to name one such ground.  

"For the avoidance of doubt the leader of the Democratic Movement is Advocate Chamisa. This a de facto and de jure fact .Two point six million Zimbabweans agreed with that position on 30 July 2018. A court of law can never be an electoral college," commented Tendai Biti, an MDC A MP and lawyer.

"Of all forms of pervasion judicial Capture is most corrosive. The judiciary is at the center of upholding the rule of law, enforcing justice to avoid self redress. Where the judiciary puts itself in a position of ridicule, issues orders that are brutum fulmen, it undermines itself."

The case was about the legality or otherwise of appointment of Nelson Chamisa and Elias Mudziri as MDC VPs and the ascension of the former to acting president following Morgan Tsvangirai's death.
 
"The appointments of the second and third respondents (Chamisa and Mudzuri) as deputy presidents of the MDC party were unconstitutional and, therefore, null and void. The appointment of second respondent (Chamisa) as acting president, and president of the MDC party were unconstitutional and, therefore, null and void," said High Court Justice Edith Mushore.

Judge Mushore could not have been more explicit what she was talking about and had nothing to do with the national elections that followed months later!

Anyone remotely familiar with Zimbabwe's judiciary would agree are judiciary is not independent. One example "judiciary capture" was Justice George Chiweshe's ruling that the 15 November 2017 military coup was "legal, justified and constitutional" to clear the way for swearing in of Emmerson Mnangagwa as new president.

To insinuate that the this case is another example of judiciary bias is laughable because Chamisa did NOT follow MDC's own constitution in his hurry to seize power.

People like Tendai Biti and David Coltart should stop crying foul just because they do not like a court decision regardless of the facts. Chamisa was crowned president of MDC and the other to VPs, Mudziri and Khupe, were never given a chance to contest in a free, fair and credible elections.
 
If MDC cannot be trusted to hold free, fair and credible elections in house what more with outsiders.
Millions of Zimbabweans have suffered all manner of harassment, beating and rape and tens of thousands have lost their very lives in our fight for freedom and human rights including the right to free, fair and credible elections. Their suffering and the lost lives would all for nothing if all we do is remove corrupt, incompetent, vote rigging and murderous Zanu PF thugs and replace them with equally corrupt, incompetent and vote rigging MDC thugs.



All articles and letters published on Bulawayo24 have been independently written by members of Bulawayo24's community. The views of users published on Bulawayo24 are therefore their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Bulawayo24. Bulawayo24 editors also reserve the right to edit or delete any and all comments received.