Monday, June 03, 2013

I'll Comply With Election Ruling, Says President Mugabe of Zimbabwe

I’ll comply with ruling: President

Monday, 03 June 2013 00:13
Lovemore Chikova in YOKOHAMA, Japan
Zimbabwe Herald

President Mugabe yesterday said he will comply with the Constitutional Court ruling ordering him to proclaim dates for the harmonised elections and hold the polls before July 31.

The Constitutional Court last week, with a crushing majority of seven judges assenting to two nays, ordered President Mugabe to proclaim election dates and hold harmonised elections by July 31 this year.

He said he would discuss with Justice and Legal Affairs Minister Patrick Chinamasa to set the polling dates as soon as he returns home from the Tokyo International Conference for African Development (Ticad) which ends here today.

The Head of State and Government and Commander-in-Chief of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces was speaking in an interview with Zimbabwean journalists covering the conference.

“Well, that’s the ruling of the court and when the court gives a ruling and the ruling is a judgment and the judgment is meant to establish how people should react to it, there is only one way of reacting to it which is accepting the judgment by our nation,” the President said.

“We accepted that judgment and we will work in accordance with that judgment.”

President Mugabe said those seeking an extension of the poll dates wanted the Global Political Agreement to continue, yet it was never meant to exist beyond 18 months.

“I am not delaying anything,” he said. “I will not accept that anymore. That’s their wish. We should forget this period and to forget it is to sink it by an election so we drown it out of our memory and say we will never do this again. It’s filthy, it’s filthy, it’s filthy,’’ he said

The court, the President said, was fair enough to give him enough time to announce the dates and hold the harmonised elections, saying he could have been ordered to hold them “tomorrow”.

“It is this decision now that we must obey and I don’t want to offend the law,” he said.

“We have offended the law about twice, asking for postponement and we can’t do that again.

“They could have said ‘hold the election tomorrow’, but they could not say that because its impossible to put the election together.

“They were reasonable enough to give us time. They could have ordered us because we have violated the Constitution right, left and centre and say do elections now and we would have trampled and said: ‘but we can’t do the elections now give us more time’.

President Mugabe said it was important that the courts provided enough time for the holding of the elections without the Government asking for it.

“So, the court is fair to make judgment on defaulters and we have been criminals on this one,” he said. “So, there it is, we are now going to be cleaner people and get exonerated and say let bygones be bygones, the future will see us clean.”

President Mugabe said if a coalition was to occur in the future, it should be made up of people who would have won elections.

“A coalition, yes, a coalition of members who won an election without involving those who have lost and christianing them in the name of legal justice: ‘we now baptise you as honourable Members of Parliament’. I hope we don’t do it again,” he said.

But President Mugabe said he did not think the circumstances were there for such kind of a coalition.

He said the GPA negotiated by three political parties in Parliament was illegal and a cheat on the people’s rights.

“Some people do not wish for elections at all, they have enjoyed riding on this GPA chariot for no pay, no real fare, free of charge,” he said.

“So, we were able now to set up the GPA and the executive comprising persons some who had won elections others who had lost elections. Both Professors (Arthur Mutambara and Welshman Ncube), for example, lost the election.

“(They) had been beaten, but they came now as dignified MPs and honourable ministers, but they are not the only ones. We have honourable ministers out of people who had been regarded as dishonourable by their constituencies, by the people.”

President Mugabe said Sadc had agreed to look at extending poll funding to Zimbabwe, but the country would not depend on that alone.

He said Zanu-PF was ready for the elections.

“We are ready. We have been ready. We stay ready, ever ready like the batteries (that are named Everready).”

Speaking on Ticad which ends today, President Mugabe said it should give Japan an opportunity to review its relations with Africa.

He said Japan failed to charm Africans because it was marketing itself through its automobile and electronic products compared to other Asian countries like China.

“I think their mistake had been to get satisfied that just as they produce cars, electronic equipment in their name and able to access markets, that fact of trade alone is enough for them to establish relations,” President Mugabe said.

“They should have followed that with real investment. China has come with a bang of investment. It is creating infrastructure in countries and its more telling than the story of electronics and motor vehicles. They must come with real projects.”

President Mugabe welcomed the US$32 billion pledged by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to African countries for the next fives years, saying he hoped it would be directed to projects that help the people.

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