Chamisa to take election case to African Commission for Human and People’s Rights

The Movement for Democratic Change Alliance, which rejected yesterday’s decision by the Constitutional Court to dismiss Nelson Chamisa’s challenge of the 30 July presidential election result, has decided to lodge a petition with the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights to nullify the election results.

Chamisa lost to Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front leader Emmerson Mnangagwa but rejected the results claiming that it was him who won the elections.

He claims to have polled 2.6 million votes and says Mnangagwa who was declared the winner with about 2.4 million votes got less than 2 million.

Chamisa who claimed victory even before the election date had been announced and continued to insist that he would win the elections unless they were rigged even pledged to give Mnangagwa his 18-year-old sister Mnangagwa polled 5 percent of the vote.

Mnangagwa got 50.8 percent which was later adjusted to 50.7 percent.

It could not be immediately confirmed whether the MDC Alliance is indeed lodging the petition but a copy is being circulated by a South African journalist.

It says that the grounds for the petition are the flagrant and multiple violations of the universal human rights of the voters and people of Zimbabwe by the current Zimbabwean regime and the Constitutional Court, including:

1. The right to free and fair elections
2. The right to a fair hearing before an impartial court
3. The right to legal representation by counsel of choice
4. The right against undue political interference; and
5. The right to be governed by a legitimate government.

The document says the petition will pray and ask for a declaration that the result of the presidential election was a legal nullity.

The ACHPR was established in 1987 by the Organisation of African Unity, now the African Union, “steer Africa from the age of human wrongs into a new age of human rights”.

The AU sent an observer mission to the Zimbabwe elections and adjudged them to be free and fair.

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