ormer Zimbabwean Minister of Information and professor of politics, Jonathan Moyo, who is now a critic of the CCC and its leader Nelson Chamisa, has sent out a congratulations message to party for winning a critical Supreme Court battle to have its parliamentary election candidates for Bulawayo restored in the poll after they were barred from the race by the High Court.
Moyo, a former Zanu PF MP and minister, also paid tribute to CCC official Welshman Ncube, a professor of law, who put a tour de force in the court in defence of CCC candidates to secure a significant victory.
Moyo writes:
“CONGRATULATIONS…
Indeed.
Congratulations, Makorokoto, Amhlophe to the 17 parliamentary candidates from CCC and five others in Bulawayo whose nomination nullification by the High Court in Bulawayo has been overturned this afternoon by the Supreme Court in Harare.
Here they say, hongera.
Special congratulations to Professor Welshman Ncube for putting up one helluva legal fight for the ages, an instant locus classicus for the annals of Zimbabwe’s electoral history.
That is how it is; you lose some, win others, vice versa and life goes on and everything else move on.
Meanwhile, the message and the truth that justice denied is justice delayed, remain. On this score, the 2023 election has made history for the wrong reasons.
It’s a notorious fact that the unprecedented high number of court battles over disputes arising from the outcome of the Nomination Court on 21 June 2023 have not only taken too long to resolve, but with only 20 days to go before polling day, the long delay has also put the integrity of the 2023 harmonised general election itself into serious question, with postal voting now in clear and present jeopardy.
All nominated candidates gazetted by ZEC on 30 June 2023 should have been allowed to get on with it from the date of the Government Gazette.
Today’s Supreme Court decision no doubt makes this point and its ramifications more sharply,and its consequences invite urgent and very troubling questions about the justice or injustice of the decision of the same Supreme Court on the Saviour Kasukuwere’s case, only last week.
Not only is justice delayed justice denied, but justice must not only be done, it must also be seen to be done.
Today’s Supreme Court decision for which CCC and other parliamentary candidates in Bulawayo who won it deserve their celebrations and are to be congratulated without any reservations, does nevertheless leave uncomfortable and unsettling thoughts about the justice or injustice of the Kasukuwere case.
It is for this troubling situation that the Constitutional Court has its work cut out, not least because section 23(3) of the Electoral Act, upon which the Kasukuwere case was decided is manifestly unconstitutional, particularly but not only in terms of sections 66 and 67 of the Constitution of Zimbabwe, regarding the right to freedom of movement and residence, and the right to vote; which are both historic gains of the liberation struggle whose heroes Zimbabweans are commemorating this month, and on which a general election is taking place for the first time since independence in 1980!”
Source Byo24News
