MDC court challenge today

The case in which Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change is seeking to have special voting stopped will be heard this afternoon- two days after the voting took place.

It is not clear what the implications of the ruling would be if the judge were to rule that they should be stopped when they have already been carried out.

Zimbabwe’s elections have been mired with litigation right from the referendum in March.

The National Constitutional Assembly went to court to have the referendum set for 16 march postponed, but it lost.

Following squabbles about when to hold the general elections, former journalist and now activist, Jealousy Mawarire went to court to force President Robert Mugabe to hold the elections before June 29.

The Constitutional Court ruled that 29 June was no longer feasible but said the elections must be held by 31 July.

Mugabe ruled by decree that the elections be held on 31 July but this was taken to the Southern African Development Community which said the government should go back to the court to ask for at least a two-week postponement. The court refused to budge.

Now reports say the leader of the smaller faction of the MDC Welshman Ncube had asked the African Union to have the elections, now due in two weeks, to be postponed.

The AU is supposed to hear the case this Friday.

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