Zimbabwe’s main opposition party called for a rerun of an election that handed President Emmerson Mnangagwa another five-year term and was found to be deeply flawed by international observers, but it stopped short of saying whether the outcome will be challenged in court.
Official tallies released by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission showed Mnangagwa winning 52.6% of the votes cast in the presidential ballot on 23 and 24 August, and the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front securing 136 of the 209 seats in the National Assembly. But Nelson Chamisa, a lawyer who heads the Citizens Coalition for Change, rejected the results as a “sham,” saying he and his party were the rightful winners.
“The entire election in this country was a fraud,” Gift Siziba, a CCC spokesman told reporters in the capital, Harare, today. “We need a new, fresh and proper election in this country.”
Despite being asked repeatedly, Siziba didn’t specify whether his party will file a legal challenge, which must be made within the seven days of the results announcement. The opposition has failed in several previous bids to have disputed election outcomes overturned by the courts, including one that Chamisa filed in 2018 to reverse Mnangagwa’s victory.
“How can they call for a re-run without providing a single iota of evidence of the alleged rigging?” said Farai Marapira, ZANU-PF’s acting director for information. There are statutory processes “that have to be followed through if they have any issues. For now they are just making noise,” he said.- BNN
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