If you contest now, how can you protest later
Zimbabwe’s election is in legal shambles – But no one really seems to mind. Yesterday, Zimbabwe’s Constitutional Court postponed indefinitely Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa’s half-hearted application to have the Court’s 31 July election deadline extended. Chinamasa’s application came at the recommendation of SADC, which, understandably, was concerned that President Mugabe’s proclamation of a 31 July election date was done unconstitutionally, and set Zimbabwe up for an election which was illegal before it even started. Instead, the court will hear Morgan Tsvangirai and Welshman Ncube’s applications about the need for an election extension tomorrow.
Meanwhile, Nomination Court is also scheduled for tomorrow, in which parties wanting to contest in the illegal and unconstitutional 31 July election will put their candidates forward. Zimbabwe’s political parties have had their primaries, fair, rushed or otherwise. According to David Coltart, the Movement for Democratic Change led by Welshman Ncube will nominate candidates tomorrow because “although 31 July election is illegal, we must contest.”
Attempts to get an answer to the question “Given that 31 July date for #ZimElection is illegal, will yr party be nominating candidates tmrw?” from the MDC led by Morgan Tsvangirai have yet to be responded to, but it seems likely they will also be fielding candidates at nomination court tomorrow.
But, on 13 June, Morgan Tsvangirai himself said of the 31 July election date: “As Morgan Tsvangirai, the Prime Minister of Zimbabwe and the President of the MDC, I will not accept a situation where Zimbabweans will yet again be railroaded and frog-marched to another illegitimate and violent election.”
So – What does refusing to be railroaded mean, exactly, if it doesn’t include refusing to contest in an illegal and unconstitutional election? As Marko Phiri pointed out when the 31 July date was announced, “if Mugabe can unilaterally call for polls, what is to stop him from declaring himself the winner” (regardless of whether he actually won or not.
If you contest in an election which you know is illegal just based on the date for which it was scheduled and the way in which it was proclaimed, what leg do you have to stand on if you try and protest its legality later?